


Interview With An Empath

by The_Whelk



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Codependent like whoa, Complete, Empath and Cannibal ...they fight crime!, Gen, Greek Mythology everywhere, Hannigram - Freeform, Married life is much stranger then they could've possibly expected, Murder Husbands, New Orleans, On the Run, Ovid, Post Season 3 Finale, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, That Hannibal ignores, Therapy, This is just how we live now, Will is not above putting his dog training skills into practice, Will sets very careful boundries, Will's dark side may have a dark side, Yet more metaphors for sex, crackish, daily life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 28,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4717979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Whelk/pseuds/The_Whelk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the dust has settled, Will goes to a therapist to figure out his new relationship. But there's  more in New Orleans then meets the eye and thier domestic truce is threatened from an unlikely source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On a bright brisk Saturday afternoon in New Orleans, somewhere near the corner of Antonine St and Magazine, Doctor Garrett Factice welcomed his first patient of the day.

Mr. Nathan van Meegeren walked into the psychiatrist's office smiling, his high and tight haircut and bushy beard implying a professorship by way of the military. He had round gold glasses that matched the golden apple paperweight on the table between the two green leather chairs in Factice’s office. Factice thought the beard, while well-groomed and glossy, aged him terribly. 

“Nice to meet you Mr. van Meegeren.” Factice shook his hand. Mr. van Meegeren sat down on the far green chair while pointing at the painting past Factice’s head.

“Is that a Francisco Bernard?” 

“Indeed it is. Most people think it’s an Ingres.”

“I’ve been taking art history lessons.”

Factice sits down and opens his notebook. “You’re new in town Mr. van Meegeren?”

“We bought a house on Constance Street but my father is from Louisiana and I grew up around here.” 

“Interesting, you don’t have an accent.”

“I lost it somewhere around Erie, fishermen follow the fish and boat workers follow the fishermen.” 

“And you're here about-” Factice glanced down at his notes. “Marital issues. How long have you and your husband been together?”  


“Married two years, together ..I’d say three before that.”

“What is this relationship, tell me about it?”

Mr. van Meegeren winced a bit but continued on steadily. “We met back east. I restore boat motors and engines, anything old and complicated really, I do a lot of typewriters now. He’s a dealer in rare books and prints. He’s the reason I came back here really. We sleep in different beds, but we haven’t slept with anyone else, to my knowledge.”

“So then what, exactly is the problem?”  


“The problem is boundaries, and how I feel about them.” 

Dr. Factice smiled and clicked his pen. “When would you say the problems between you and your husband began?”

Mr. van Meegeren took a deep breath. “It’s always been complicated between us, but I believe this particular set of problems started after we ate his ex-wife.”

Dr. Factice froze. The air in the office became charged, ozonic, the moment before a lighting strike.

“It would be more helpful if I dropped the pretense, doctor.”

Factice mentally erased the short hair and thick beard. “You’re the guy- the one with H-”

“Careful when speaking of the devil.”

“You’re dead.”  


“Will Graham is dead, but I still get up and walk around. Bit like Cotard Syndrome. I knew a girl with that. Until Hannibal set her on fire.” Dr. Factice stopped breathing, assuming that stunned look rabbits get in the presence of a predator. “Don’t worry doctor, he’s not listening.”

“You misrepresented yourself and your reasons for this session, I think our time is up.”

“I haven’t misrepresented anything. I came to you saying I needed an outside professional’s perspective on my relationship and to help me work through issues related to it.” Dr. Factice began to sweat. “You’re in no danger from me. Please treat me as you would any other patient.”

“That’s an unreasonable request.”

“I am very familiar with unreasonable requests. Please, I sought you out deliberately.”

Dr. Factice lowered his head slowly before bringing it back up to eye level. “It would be an honor to help you Mr. van Meegeren.” 

The conversation continued amicably, with van Meegeren nee’ Graham explaining as best he could how his relationship with Hannibal came to be and how it evolved. For his part, Dr. Factice was doing his best not to run screaming from the office demanding to be put in protective custody. (Although, if he was being honest, the meals sounded delicious, if you ignored the providence.) 

"We have good days and bad days, which makes it worse. The days when you don't just endure it but enjoy it. Look forward to it. He hasn’t killed in over a year. It’s alarming how easy it is to forget what he is, what he’s done. Slow and steady as quicksand.”

“By ‘looking forward’ are you talking about romance or...” A part of Doctor Factice is outside himself, yelling himself hoarse. “The cannibalism?”

“The kindness. Connection. To be needed that strongly and that intensely. To see yourself reflected in someone’s eyes so differently than how you see yourself. I know if I let myself forget what he’s done, what he’s done to me, I’ll be completely lost inside him. “ His eyes flit to the ceiling, he can’t look at Factice as he talks. “But if I am to be his forever, and he has made it impossible for me not to be, then why not lie back and enjoy it?”

“Are you worried he’ll kill you?”

“No. He’ll either kill me or he won't. I think we’re pretty even on the trying to kill each other. It never sticks. On the other hand I’m no longer afraid of anything anymore, I used to be such a fog of possibilities and disaster scenarios and anxiety. If anything this is the least fearful my life has been. I speak differently. I used to try to make myself small and inoffensive . People just look it as a sign of weakness, or instability. That’s one advantage to the monster boyfriend, you know he'll rip the throat out of anything that threatens you.”

Dr. Factice briefly wondered if that was literal or metaphorical. 

“It sounds like you’re describing an abusive relationship. Hurt followed by comfort.”

“Mutually abusive maybe. Pathologically co-dependent surely. A-“ van Meegeren puts on a cowboy drawl “‘Just can’t quit you’ thing. I have to stop myself from thinking about it in the third person. Will Graham did this. Will Graham did that. I have to stop myself from making it a story, something that happened to someone else.”

“Why do you have to stop it from being a story?”

“People in stories are too sympathetic. I’ve become wary of grey areas.” 

“You mentioned you sleep in separate bedrooms? Why is that? Are you worried about being vulnerable around him?”

Mr. van Meegeren chuckled. “I don’t trust myself. I need something in my life not Hannibal colored. I spent years as Jack’s attack dog, I don’t want to end up curled up at the bottom of Hannibal’s bed. The indulged pet.”

Factice realized he’d been gripping his pen rock still for twenty minutes, not even pretending to write. He licked his lips. “You don’t sound so sure about that.”

“Over the last two years I’ve kept and maintained very strict boundaries with Hannibal Lecter. Emotional. Physical. Behavioral. But he finds loopholes, sticks pins in my soft spots. I slip up, I give in. Get too comfortable with the cover of being a married couple. I’m like a slot machine, you don’t win on every pull but sometimes you get a little and sometimes, jackpot.” Mr. van Meegeren made an explosion motion with his hands.

“Is it a cover? Being a couple?”

Mr. van Meegeren ignored the question. “He’d bring up people who got away with murder, the so-called great and good usually. People above the law. He’d tell me it was a public duty, doing everybody a favor. In those first few weeks I almost believed him. But it quickly gets less noble. Hannibal’s good at pushing boundaries, exploiting weaknesses. Moving your limit just a little bit every day. Although there was this couple in Kentucky running an illegal puppy mill, Shiba Inus, that um-” 

Mr. van Meegeren closed his eyes. Dr. Factice closed his notebook to keep his hands from shaking.

“-That is why I can’t keep giving things to him, connecting to him. I have to keep guard, I have to be awake and aware. Cause if I slip up, and step into the quicksand ....”

There was a pause. Dr. Factice took a sharp breath, epiphany in the air. 

“It sounds to me like you’re asking me for permission to slip up. To curl up at his feet.” 

Mr. van Meegeren shot Factice a look. Not a stab, not a shot, but a shock of recognition. Factice’s heart sank. 

“There’s something else.” Mr. van Meegeren said. “I liked it when people were afraid of me. Like you are now.”

Dr. Factice’s eyes went wide.

“And something I’ve never told Hannibal is ..when I think back on all the other people involved, my co-workers, now running scared, paranoid, terrified he or we might come after them? I think; Good.” He gulped. “It’s a suit I’m getting too comfortable in. If I keep wearing it, I’ll be further infected by Hannibal Lecter. A palimpsest for him to rewrite as he wishes.” 

“Although I am a little curious what he’d try to write over me if I let him.”

“But the infection as you call it.” said Dr. Factice. “ It goes both ways. You’ve done good, by your own admission. You said he’s hasn’t killed in a year, shows no desire or need to kill. He didn’t before you got together. He maintains his cover.”

“Love me or I’ll kill again isn’t love, it’s blackmail. A toddler throwing a tantrum.”

“That may be enough for him. Could it be enough for you?”

Mr. van Meegeren made a reflexive half smirk, half scowl. “You’re saying he’d change for the love of a good man?”

“Imitation is how we understand others.Tale as old as time. What if you really challenged him to change? Aren’t you curious what would happen then? Worse thing he could do is kill you.”

Mr. Van Meegeren rolled his eyes at what Factice thought the worst thing Hannibal could do was. 

“You make it sound like I was put on Earth to love Lecter.”

“He may believe that, and if that’s true, then you have that advantage over him. If you honestly believe he would never kill again if you wished it, then you’d be doing him, and everyone, a very big favor.”

Mr. van Meegeren sighed, eyes dead on Factice. 

"Lock Hannibal Lecter in a cage of love?"

“Love can be seen as an act of courage. Is it a cage if he goes in willingly?” said Dr. Factice.

"A Crate Trained Cannibal." van Meegeren's jaw clicked. “You make it sound noble.”

“Considering the alternative. And if you’re strong enough, and you’ve proven to me how strong you can be.” Factice got very quiet. “And how badly you want it.”

Mr. van Meegeren nodded. “That could be a workable solution.”

“Maybe turn that bedroom into an office?” Factice raised his eyebrows and then raised them further when his office door opened and a man walked inside. It was a tall man wearing a black leather jacket, plain t-shirt, and denim pants. He had a trendy haircut, long on top, shaved sides, with white earbuds dangling out his ears into his jacket pocket. 

It was obvious who he was, despite the youthful cut and Brando drag. 

“You said he wasn't here. You said I was safe.”

“I said he wasn’t listening.” Hannibal Lecter took his earbuds out, the tinny sound of a Faust Opera pouring out of them. “And I said you had nothing to fear from me.”

Then Hannibal lunged forward, picked up the gold apple paperweight on the table between the green leather chairs and bashed Garrett Factice in the head. There was no blood.

“I had five more minutes.” Will Graham stood up and brushed himself off, turning then toward Factice’s laptop on a nearby desk.

“I got bored.” Hannibal arranged Dr. Factice’s limp but still breathing body in the chair, checking pupils and such. “Very mild concussion. Bit of retrograde amnesia. Workable.” Lecter unrolled Factice’s left shirt cuff. 

“You dented his apple.” Will said while typing at Factice’s laptop, erasing and obscuring any evidence that Mr. Nathan van Meegeren even made an appointment.

“I’ll send him a fruit basket.” Hannibal produced a syringe and tapped it out. Will got up from the laptop and walked forward him, picking up the paperweight and putting it back on the table before putting his hand on the back of Hannibal’s head. 

“You know...” Hannibal squeezed the syringe out. “I could take some from the back, some fat. Serve it as salo. Not like he’d miss it.” Hannibal looked up at Will. Will tightened his grip on Hannibal’s hair.

“Birthdays and Christian Holidays.” Will said.

“Can’t Christmas come early?” Will pulled Hannibal’s hair.

“A time and a place for everything.”

Hannibal found the vein and pushed the plunger in without breaking eye contact. He smiled as he did it. Will assumed that was for his benefit. 

He liked it.

After Will and Hannibal wiped the place clean they got to work arranging Dr. Factice on a couch in the other room. 

“No secretary?” Hannibal said as he slid a pillow under Factice’s drooling head.

“No, I wanted to keep it simple.” Will arranged the room as best he could like Dr. Factice had decided to take a nap. There was a brief argument if Factice should have his thumb in his mouth. Will won and he didn’t.  


They left the building, Hannibal putting on his sunglasses and sighing. 

“That considerably piqued my appetite.” 

Will Graham rolled his eyes again as he leaned a bit into Lecter. “The Green Goddess has a wonderful vegetarian menu.”

Hannibal smiled, nuzzling his head into Will’s hair like a cat. “The things I do for love.”

Will Graham patted him on the shoulder and thought

“Oh the things you’ll do.”


	2. Chapter 2

The Green Goddess occupies a small space on Exchange Alley that sprawls out into the street and cobblestones. Will and Hannibal are scrunched into a corner table in the cramped, luridly painted interior part of the restaurant, a few feet from the lively open kitchen full of cooks in sweatpants and colorful bandannas. It’s hot being so close to the kitchen, so Hannibal hung his black leather jacket on the coat rack and splayed out like a lion on the bench, muscles wrapped in a white cotton t-shirt that managed to look both expensive and all-American. Will for his part, had unbuttoned his shirt and folded his silk Liberty tie into his jacket pocket. They sucked on Abita root beer and ice water. As the meal finished ( Sweet Sherry Pork Rillettes to share, Chili Mango Lime Salad for Will, duck sausage Po’Boy for Hannibal) they ordered coffee and digestive cookies. 

Will Graham looked at the busboy, a young dark-haired thing running from table to kitchen, all floppy hair and clear skin and long fingers.

“How would you eat him?”

“I wouldn’t.” Hannibal gave the busboy a once over. “No reason to.”

“Make up a reason, doesn't have to make sense. Something trivial. You’re good at that.”

Hannibal turns toward Will and gets out his Smartphone, pointing toward it, like he’s showing Will a hilarious kitten video.

“You can see his heart beating through that flimsy wifebeater he has. Big heart. Strong heart. I’d pull it out carefully, cutting away just enough and close enough to the time of cooking to keep the flavor. I’d carve away the gristle and reserve the rest of the fat for flavor-”

“Use him in other meals?”

“Spread the boy around. A heart can serve several, if prepared right. Pan-seared or grilled with fresh herbs and seasonings, fast cooked in fat like a tenderloin on cast iron, served with a persillade and maybe a drizzle of dressing. A blood dressing in place of vinegar. He could be enough for two.”

Will gestured to the waitress for the check, taking another look at the busboy’s large beating heart inside his slim, immaculate chest.

\---------

Outside the Green Goddess, Hannibal pulls out a cigarette from his interior jacket pocket. It’s a new habit, smoking numbs tastebuds, but his custom cigarettes are rarely all tobacco. He lights up and Will asks for one.

Hannibal reaches for his pocket but Will plucks the lit cigarette out of Hannibal’s mouth and takes a long drag. He puffs once, then hands it back to Hannibal.

Hannibal smiles. 

\---------

It’s late evening and Will and Hannibal are at home in their place on Constance Street. It’s a two story shotgun house Done up to look like a double-gallery. Lots of columns, porch furniture and a wrap-around back veranda. The first floor was gutted and made open-plan with tons of chandeliers and glued-on moldings to suggest that was the idea all along.

The big feature is a huge square hole blasted into the kitchen wall so anyone in the kitchen is visible from the combined dining room/front room, framed like a painting. The kitchen was even slightly raised to give the impression of a stage from the dining room. Will lay flat on the living room wicker-basket couch, the only stick of furniture in the front room, everything painted relator white. The place reeked of cardboard and dust and Moving In. He was reading a book when Hannibal came over, glass of whiskey in one hand, other hand on the back of the couch, his head lowered down near Will’s face.

“Good book?” 

“Not good. Interesting.” Will turned the page, not looking at Hannibal. “True crime. Serial killer out of North Dakota. He called himself the Hammerhead in taunting and, quite frankly, stupid letters to the police. Never caught. Presumed dead. Victims usually old women or transients. Didn’t even hit them with a hammer just, basic cruelty. Sad really. The book is more about the investigator, which is interesting.”

Hannibal handed Will the glass of whiskey.

“Sounds like a second rater. How would you change the Hammerhead?”

Will took the glass of whiskey and sipped it. “First I’d remove his eyes, replace them with black reflective disks, shark eyes. Then I’d tuck his sex behind his legs and glue his legs together. Then I’d cut carefully cut his flank to resemble gills and dislocate his jaw to make a wide, biting mouth.”

Will took a drink from the glass of whiskey.

“And display?” asked Hannibal, softly.

“Cantilever hooks off the ceiling, like the whale in the National History Museum. Suspended in motion.”

Will handed Lecter back the glass of whiskey before he got up, put the book on the couch, and walked out of the room and up the stairs.

Hannibal finished the whiskey in one gulp. 

\------------


	3. Chapter 3

Hannibal awoke at 8:15 every morning without an alarm. Will thrives on routine and Hannibal is happy to oblige even if it takes a little spice out of the day. He walks out of his bedroom, pajamas-clad, filling the kettle with water to run through the beans he was just now shoving into the oven to roast before he crushed them for use in the big French Press. You don’t waste moments making coffee so Hannibal brought out the cups and even scalded the cream before pouring it all together. He pulls the home-made biscotti from last night out of fridge and places them with the coffee on a tidy silver tray in the front room, the one with all the sunlight. And then he waits.

This is what he has done every morning, more or less, since they got together, regardless of season or setting. The irony of the current contentment is how little Hannibal cooks anymore. Will is still skittish seeing him in the kitchen (“Hands where I can see them, ingredients I saw you buy in the original packaging.” Will is fond of rules) and in a city with such rich and legendary restaurant culture, it seems less important to cook at home.

He can still make coffee, and if coffee is what Will wants, he’s happy to oblige.

Will arrives downstairs a while later, beard uncombed and bushy. Will’s anti-anxiety pills make sure he sleeps but makes him slow to wake and groggy in the morning. Hannibal hands him a cup of coffee and biscotti and beams at him. 

“Sleep well?” 

“Bit rough.” Will takes a sip while looking out the window at the swaying hanging ferns on the porch. “Looks like it might rain today. Good coffee.”

Hannibal smiles. He’d kill a thousand men to make sure he got that compliment every day for the rest of his life. 

“What does today look like?” asked Hannibal. The front room in the morning is almost painfully bright with all the whitewash and bare shelves. They really need to decorate. Or paint. Settle in.

“I’ve got Mrs. Chatelain picking up her typewriter at 2.”

“Ah yes, the lively one. She’ll want to stick around for a drink no doubt.”

Will took a bite out his biscotti. “Lively or not I think she wants me to do her hall clock. That’ll be a huge coup. A good get.”

“I could help with the clock. Clock making was a passion of mine as a boy.”

“Yeah well we’ll see.” Will hasn’t looked him in the eyes since he walked in but decides to throw him a bone. “You have the seller from New York coming by today?” Will makes eye contact over the coffee cup. “The one you were excited about?”

“Yes, the Gustave Dore. If he’s telling the truth it could be very newsworthy.”

“Hopefully not too newsworthy.” Will finishes his coffee and places it on the silver tray. “I’m going for a run before I shower, thanks for the coffee.” He squeezes Hannibal's shoulder and Hannibal leans in but he’s too late. Will’s already gone.

\--------

Will’s day proceeds normally, according to routine. He runs, he does paperwork, he cleans and oils parts and objects and arranges his garage shop into fastidious shape. His 2 o'clock arrives with her husband to pick up the antique typewriter he had so carefully and expensively brought into working order. 

“It’s divine!” cooed Mrs. Chatelain, examining the fine polished keys of her great grand-aunt’s typewriter. Normally he’d deliver it to the home of the client, or receive them in his own parlor. but Mrs. Chatelain was the rare combination of a gearhead with enough social standing that she could walk into a machine shop and get motor oil on her dress without raising comment. The typewriter is a debutante gift for their youngest daughter, Theodora Marie. The Chatelains are a family that still had debutantes coming out and named them Theodora. 

“Perfection.” said her husband, his askew pocket square and facial flush indicating a liberal amount of eye openers and liquid lunches. “You’d think Great Aunt Marquette bashed her husband in the head with it yesterday.”

“Oh now hush G.J. Don’t speak ill.” Will liked Mrs. Chatelain. She was warm, blonde-grey and bosomy, like if Marilyn Monroe had lived to see 50 with the mind of an obsessive mechanical engineer in retirement. They had long animated talks about how to recreate a model train system of the New Orleans streetcar system at its height for the museum. The typewriter itself, a Remington 1908, was nothing much to look at but technically and mechanically fascinating. She asked a lot of questions. Mr. Chatelain, a balding man who wore his weight in his linen suits like an accessory he picked out for the day, tolerated the nerdy shop talk as long as he could. 

“You know it’s crazy, what they found strung up in Audubon Park.”

The two gearheads stopped dead.

“What do you mean?” asked Will.

“Just today. You didn’t hear? The body they found in the oak trees. Don’t you read the news?”

“I’m usually in my shop.” The color drained out of Will’s face. His feet stuck to the floor.

“Terrible thing, a young man, nude, strung up, holding a golden cup I think I heard. “ Mr. Chatelain shook his head. “Now they’re keeping it all very hush-hush but I heard he worked under our dear Governor. Really worked under if you take my-”

“G.J!” Mrs. Chatelain snapped toward him. “I’m sure Mr. van Meegeren doesn’t want to hear your boy's club gossip. Such a gruesome turn my husband’s interests take, no idea where he gets it from.”

“Simply keeping the Southern Gothic alive my pet. We wouldn’t want to lose our traditions.”

The Chatelains continued in that manner for a while but Will couldn’t tell you what they said or how he got them out the door with their typewriter and an appointment to come around later in the week and look at their hall clock. Will was preoccupied with something else entirely. 

\--------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It's crazy what they found strung up in Audubon park" is an oblique reference to "Somewhere In Hollywood" by 10 cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNSc5CBxpTY


	4. Chapter 4

\--------------

Hannibal and Will, together again in the house on Constance street with no furniture, are having a quiet night in. It’s twilight with far off thunder suggesting a storm and Will does some social media clean-up promotion for his shop on an iPad while dinner cooks. He’s standing in the kitchen side of the huge theatrical window between the kitchen and dining room. Hannibal stands in the dining room side, nursing a glass of amber Rkatsiteli. The kitchen window provides a shiny stone counter for them to be alone together at. There’s an untouched basket of chive biscuits Hannibal cooked that afternoon between them. 

A stew bubbles fitfully in the background as Will updates his shop’s Facebook page with pictures of the restored typewriter, careful not to show him or his client. Hannibal doesn’t have to do this. His rare books and prints shop just on the wrong side of Esplanade Ave attracts the sort of clients into that sort of thing. Van Meegeren’s Antique Works has to have a bit of hustle.

“How was the Gustave Dore?” asks Will, pausing from his iPad updating to stir the stew.

“A complete catastrophe.” Hannibal finishes his Rkatsiteli. “He was selling a fake. A forgery. And he knew it. I knew he knew it. People like that should be punished.”

“People who abuse trust?” Will turned the heat on the range off, so the stew could sit covered, to let the flavors melt together. 

“I came home early actually, after I knew it was a bust. Saw you leave with the Chatelains. Lovely looking couple. We should have them for dinner.”

“Watching me again?” Will turned and opened another bottle of wine with his back to Hannibal.

“Not watching, just happened to turn the corner at the right time.” Hannibal knows how Will feels about watching him. 

“I don’t think we’d get on, socially speaking. Mrs. Chatelain is fine but that family...” Will grabbed two glasses from the nearby rack. “ Big and old and strange. They have a hunting lodge in Ohio for rich weirdos. God knows what they get up to.”

“Imagine what they’d think about us.” Hannibal smiles as Will hands him the wine. 

“Dinner should be ready soon.” said Will. Hannibal took a sniff and a gulp and then took another sip, and then he went limp and his head hit the stone counter top separating the kitchen from the dining room. There was a crack of thunder and the storm began in earnest. Will took one of the chive biscuits out of the basket and ate it as the cloudburst poured onto the house.   
\------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They have a hunting lodge in Ohio for rich weirdos http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/54684558.jpg
> 
> Rkatsiteli is an ancient central European grape used to produce dry (or more popularly, dessert) amber wine. It was very popular in the Soviet Union.


	5. Chapter 5

Hannibal came to tied to a chair, a nice heavy chair he’d picked out a month previously for the dining room from the antique store near Frenchmen Street. He’s in a storage room near the back of the house, barely bigger than a closet. Will stood over him. Will splashed him with water from a metal bucket. He lurched his head upright, gasping for air.

“You still know your ship knots.” Hannibal said after regaining his composure, rubbing his wrists and feet together. Will threw another load of water on him. Hannibal could feel the goose egg growing where his forehead hit the counter. The storm outside rumbled like an empty stomach. Hannibal looks around “No windows, no witnesses. Good boy.”

Will dropped the bucket. “What have you done?!”

Hannibal ran his tongue over his teeth. “Your anti-anxiety medication, some opioids from my medicine cabinet, all mixed into the wine. I smelled it before the first sip, figured you had good reason for it.” Hannibal took a deep breath. “I am, as you would say in the vernacular, tripping balls.” 

Will kicks the bucket into his shins hard enough to leave another bruise. “This isn’t funny.”

“I love you too.” said Hannibal, squirming a bit in the chair. It’s very funny to him. “A very short leash you’ve got me on Mr. van Meegeren.” Hannibal can’t say Will’s assumed name without smiling, his own little joke, the name of a famous counterfeiter. 

“A man was found dead, nude, in the branches of Audubon park yesterday.” Will was starting to hyperventilate, tensing his jaw and posture to keep himself from tearing Hannibal apart with his bare hands. “Strung up, presented, and posed, gold cup in his hand. Now you tell me, look me in the eye and say and say it wasn’t you. “

“Are you even in a state to believe to me if I said-”

“Stop it. Stop doing that.” Will ran his hands through his hair. “Stop being clever and cute about it-”

“So now you think I’m cute?”

Will pulled a kitchen knife out of his pocket and pushed it to Hannibal’s neck. Hannibal shudders. Will is most exquisite when he’s angry, more so when it’s justified and righteous. He’d send Will out to murder child killers and old lady molesters every day if he could, just to see that face. 

“Tell me you didn’t do it. Or if you did, tell me why. Tell me you have a plan, that this isn’t random- I can’t live in the dark again. I won’t. Tell me the truth. “ Will choked, holding the knife steady. “Don’t lie to me Hannibal, please don’t lie to me.”

“Will, If I stopped doing anything natural to my nature, it's because of you. I stopped killing for you, because it’s what you need/ And as long as you need it, I will refrain.” Hannibal looked into Will’s eyes. “ For the richness you bring to my life, I would deny myself bread and water. I was with you all day, all night. I couldn’t have killed that boy.”

Will knows that’s a half truth. They didn’t sleep in the same room. He could’ve snuck out in the night and done his work, but Will doesn’t care. He wants to believe him so much it hurts, like the phantom pain on the scar tissue hidden under his beard. Will, despite his strength and despite his resolve, collapses. The knife clatters across the floor away from him. He puts his head in Hannibal’s lap. He starts sobbing slightly, more in relief then anything else, staining Hannibal’s trousers.

“I didn’t want it to be you but I knew if-” He wheezes. “I had to be sure.”

“I love that that you had to be sure, look, Will, look at me.” Will raises his head slowly, meeting Hannibal’s gaze.

“My dear sweet Will, I will always tell you everything, anything I do. We’re a team Will, no matter how much you’d like to ignore that.”

The words stung. Hannibal was perfectly aware how good Will had gotten at keeping him at a distance, steeling himself against these moments of merger and connection. Will stared at him, hands clutching his pants, his face wet. They lock eyes. “Now and forever.”

Hannibal leaned forward, the rope burning his wrists to nuzzle Will’s hair “First and only.”

Will, head still in Hannibal’s lap, reaches out and grabs the dropped kitchen knife. He cuts Hannibal’s hands free. Hannibal pats Will on the shoulder.

“Come now, I’m not upset you thought it was me. I am upset that I missed dinner.”

“This is dangerous. We’re in danger. This looks like a Ripper killing. People will be looking into it.”

“Nothing we can do about it now. It would be very difficult for them to pin it on a dead man.” Hannibal bent forward as Will backed away, reaching for the knots around his legs. “Do you think we should look into it?”

Will wiped his face dry with his sleeve. “I don’t know, might make it worse. Putting us under scrutiny. Might be more suspicious than if we just up and left.”

“We can talk about it over dinner. Who knows it might be-”

“If you say ‘fun’ that knife goes right back to your neck.”

“I was going to say ‘interesting’. Don’t you want to know what’s happening?”

They leave the storage room together to reheat the stew and discuss their next move.

Later, in a move of mutual reconciliation, they sleep in the same bed, their flesh illuminated by the lighting flashes of a late summer storm. 

\-------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal picked out the chairs at Greg's Antiques, it's more like a warehouse really http://www.gregsantiques.net/ (for statement pieces he'd go to auctions, of course)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, or in this case the truth from the luridly described fanfiction. "

Will wakes up with Hannibal next to him. He pulls Hannibal closer, resting his head in Hannibal’s armpit, his leg between Hannibal’s own, limbs mingling. They’re pale yellow in the post thunderstorm light.

“One of us has to make coffee.” says the sleepy cannibal serial killer. Will runs his hand down Hannibal’s chest.

“I can make coffee.” 

“You’re a saint.” He says before sinking back into semi-sleep.

Coffee is served in the kitchen as Will allows Hannibal to scramble some eggs and warm up leftover sausage. He’s happy to do it. They eat in the big bright front room. They’re tender and careful with each other, every couple after a fight. It reminds Will of their time just after the fall, the honeymoon when they took time to find the fine edges and counters of their relationship, before the questionable choices that led Will into Dr. Factice’s office in the first place.

Here and now, they overdo trying to be kind to each other. They both offer to do the dishes, take the garbage out, make another cup of coffee, make excuses to touch each other and use familiar in-jokes and phrases. Faith is, after all, perfected in works. 

Hannibal leaves for work with Will hunched over his iPad at the kitchen counter and returns that night with Will in the same position with the addition of several newspapers, stacks of printouts, a half empty bottle of Knob Creek Rye, and containers from a local fried chicken joint; the sight of which makes Hannibal reflexively wince.

“Busy day?” Hannibal says, putting his jacket and bag in the hall closet.

“Our victim has a name.” Will said, not looking up from the tablet.

Hannibal walks over and clears away the empty fast food containers and kitchen mess. He had hoped after breakfast he’d be allowed to make dinner. But no matter, he’s patient and knows Will will come around in his own time. He pours himself a finger of Knob Creek, its roughness as vivid and awakening as a smack in the face.

“Who’s the unlucky boy then?”

“Connor Smythe, 27, from a nice family in Zachary. Worked as an aide in the Governor’s office. Only one printed obituary which just mentions ‘died suddenly’ but doesn’t say where or when or how. Very fast funeral, very private. Governor's office made a one sentence boilerplate comment to the press and that was that.”

“Are we sure he’s the one? Or our arboreal body isn’t an unusually determined suicide?” There’d been almost no news coverage of the event, an item in a police blotter about an unidentified body found “somewhere near’ Audubon Park. The typically lurid press was keeping, or had been told to keep, quiet. Hannibal remembered that from his Ripper days, so many beautiful scenes known only to a select few investigators, so many never found at all.

“I took that into consideration but then there’s this.” Will tabs over to a website called NOLA WHISPERZ, an old-style web forum dressed with photographs of pursed lips.

“It’s a message board for gossip and blind items about famous people traveling through town. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, or in this case the truth from the luridly described fanfiction. But certain things keep coming up. You wouldn’t believe what that guy who plays Batman is into.”

“Truth and lies, fantasy and gossip. Where’s Freddie Lounds when you need her?”

“On Twitter actually. She’s writing a book about us.”

“Perhaps we should pay her a visit, make sure her facts are straight.”

Will shoots Hannibal A Look. A look Hannibal knows well. He sighs and puts on an undignified pout. “So, was Mr. Chatelain right? Is the Governor dipping his pen in office ink?”

“According to the posters he’s got that reputation. Several people claiming to work in the Governor's mansion wrote stories about him and a young curly-haired male aide. Late nights, closed door one-on-one meetings, shirts buttoned wrong. A lot of them come from the Governor's trips into town. “ Wil pulled out the photo used in Smythe's Obit: young, athletic, wholesome, and curly-haired.

“Wonder what his wife and children and fellow Republicans would think.”

“So there’s your motive, or part of a motive. I tracked one of the story posters to his Instagram account,” Will turned to Hannibal. “It’s an app you can post pictures on.” he says, mock-seriously, and Hannibal could just bite him for that. Maybe he will, later.

“And from there I tracked him to this hookup app.” Will opened a tab showing a long conversation between xLakeDadx and PrepCute87.

“ I started out like I was looking for a friend for the evening but got him to admit he works at the Governor's office and then I said I thought I knew someone there named Connor and - bingo - he's a chatty hen. The impression was Connor got special treatment. He thinks the whole thing stinks.”

Hannibal scrolled through the conversation, admiring how cunningly Will fabricated xLakeDadx. He played a quasi-closeted divorced father of two in North Shore perfectly, horny, eager, and not too bright. PrepCute87 had no idea he was being interrogated. 

“He came off bored and lonely, so it's not hard, I flirt enough to keep him interested.”

Will scrolled up to show a picture he sent to PrepCute87, an intimate closeup of a body part clearly not Will's. Hannibal smiled but then scrolled past two other photos Will had shared, two blurry shots of his stomach scars. They were also close-up, you couldn’t tell the shape of them or identity Will by them, but Hannibal would know them from any angle, at any size. He put them there.

“He mentioned he was into scars. I had to keep him talking.”

Hannibal sighed again, not dejectedly, not comically. More like a restrained growl. 

Will knows he’s going to pay for that. He pivots.

“We need to find out if this is true and if Connor Smythe is our victim. Mr. Chatelain undoubtedly knows more. Come with me to the house on Friday? You can get him sloshy and chatty while I distract Mrs. Chatelain with 18th century clockwork.”

“Of course.” The prospect of drinking martinis in a finely appointed parlor in pursuit of truth and justice cleared the storm clouds from Hannibal’s face. Will rubbed his eyes. “I gotta wash up, I feel like I’m sweating chicken grease.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything but-” Will got up and moved his glass to the sink, Hannibal watched him round the corner to the bathroom before lighting a cigarette.

“Not in the house!” shouted Will from the bathroom. Hannibal heard the shower run and sighed, comically this time, and walked out onto the back porch.

\---------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RE: Faith perfected in works. References the Juedo-Christan concept that faith requires deeds (or works) to be complete. It's not one thing to say you're something you have to do it.
> 
> Freddie's on Twitter, a little reference to @Tattle_Crime
> 
> Yes, Will sent a dick pic. For justice.


	7. Chapter 7

The days leading up to Friday were a blur of news gathering and domestic bliss. They continued their mutual kindness, taking effort to put the other one first so they’d both be cared for. They even started pulling stuff out of the storage room and closets. As the house filled with cane-back dining chairs, potted palms, and historical paint samples, Will noticed how peaceful and inevitable it all felt.

“We’re finally doing this.” He thought. What did he say in Dr. Factice’s office? That slow sinking quicksand feeling? Doesn’t quicksand sink faster if you struggle? Maybe he was struggling for no reason. It felt good not fighting it.

But there was another voice inside his head, sitting atop his mind like oil on water. A voice that came from the hickory hand-scraped butcher block, whispering around the six-burner Viking oven, muttering inside the drawer where the poultry scissors were tucked neatly beside the heavy kitchen twine. 

“This is how it starts.”

\------------

Walking up the path past the large shrubs that obscure the Chatelain House from the street, Will is relieved the humidity explains away his sweat, He’s not scared, just antsy. Will and Grand Houses have a bad history. He’s already taken half a pill and wondering if it’s to soon to take take the other half. He’s thankful he’s coming in as a workman rather than on a social call and he grips his leather equipment bag like a protective ward. Hannibal, sensing Will tense up, leans in and whispers.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you, pocketing the silverware.”

Will straightens himself out and squares his shoulders, about the ring the bell when the door flies open to reveal Mr. Chatelain in his silk dressing gown and socks.

“I’m so sorry I was expecting someone else, do come in.”

Chatelain House was mock-Tudor, set far back on the lot and modest for such a storied family. The decor was tasteful in that way old, rich families have taste by never buying anything new and trading amongst themselves. The wainscoting alone would’ve pegged them as Anglophiles but a title-hunting great-great-grand niece married a cash poor minor aristocrat back in the 1870s, providing an injection of respectability and fine English furnishings. If it wasn’t for the heat you’d think you were in a building at Balmoral.

The only place he could compare it to was the Verger estate, and it’s a fraction of the size and much more a large family home then a fortress in the woods. Hannibal would, no doubt, have Opinions about it. The layout of the home, with a big front hall and side dens and libraries reminded him of the board game Clue. He told himself to keep a lookout for hidden passageways. 

“I’m sorry not to have met your expectations.” Hannibal gave him the once over. Mr. Chatelain always looked like he was perfectly dressed for the occasion even while answering the door in a faded paisley print. 

“No bother at all, just so many people coming and going these days I get a bit turned around.”

“Is that Bo at the door?” A female voice rang out from the top of the stairs.

“‘Fraid not dear, come down and greet our guests.”

Will, who was busy trying to find an excuse to examine a brass candlestick telephone on the hall table to determine its make and model, turned around to see Theodora Marie Chatelain walk down the stairs. She was, in her long ponytail, Breton striped shirt and red pants, beautiful. Beautiful for being young and well-cared for and beautiful for the way the light from the stained glass hit her hair and skin. It was almost uncanny, she looked like a creature of light and celluloid, more mirror trick then flesh and bone.

“Darling may I introduce Mr. Nathan van Meegeren and Mr. James Caradoc.” She shook both their hands with a well-practiced “How do you do?”, a ring of finishing school and etiquette class around it. 

“It’s a delight to finally meet you Mr. van Meegeren. Mother can’t say enough about your attention to detail. I adore the typewriter you restored. I’m thinking of writing my college essay on it, help it stand out.”

Will smiled. Why was she making him so nervous? She’s a teenager, not the Queen. Although something in her bearing said she wouldn’t turn down the job offer.

“Mr. Caradoc owns a rare and unusual print shop in the Marigny.” said Mr. Chatelain.

“Then I might be paying you a visit soon. I think I’ve aged out of boy band posters on the wall.”

“Might I suggest a lithograph of Byron and Shelly? Help ease the transition.”

There were interrupted by another voice coming from down the hall. A deeper, more masculine voice asking if anyone was home.

“There he is, taking the back way in again, we’re in the hall Bo!” Theodora called out and waved him in. 

He enters and the whole cycle of pleasantries and introductions begins again. ‘Bo’ is Beaux Williams-Forrest, Theodora’s boyfriend and classmate at some private academy Will didn’t catch the name of. Will zones out a bit, looking at them. They’re both blonde and sharp, a Brooks Brothers ad come to life. Gorgeous but unnerving, like the Chatelains hired actors to play the roles of daughter and boyfriend. 

People like that aren’t supposed to really exist. But then again, neither are people like he and Hannibal. Or Mason Verger. Or the Great Red Dragon.

Mrs. Chatelain appeared, wiping her gloves on an oil-stained smock. “Sorry for keeping him Theo but he stopped around the woodshed to see the scale streetcar plans.”

‘The name was misleading, Mrs. Chatelain’s woodshed rivaled a technical college workshop.

“Oh! Mr. van Meegeren, come this way, I moved the clock into the shed. The patient is on the table, open and waiting.” Will bid goodbye and the two teenagers left together, leaving Hannibal and Mr. Chatelain in the hall.

“Join me for a drink Mr. Caradoc?” He gestured to the darkened parlor. 

\----------------

Mr. Chatelain mixed himself another drink without breaking conversation. Since they entered the parlor (Yellow wallpaper, red rug, camel back couches) Mr. Chatelain had spoken nonstop through a glass of sherry and a mint julep. Hannibal is happy to let Chatelain witter on about house repairs and museum functions and the high cost of stabling horses if it keeps him from noticing that he hasn’t touched his drink.  
Hannibal’s mind wanders, resting on a marble-topped marquetry commode or cabinet in the English Rococo style. At a glance it looked like a Chippendale, making it nearly priceless. Hannibal thought for a second about smashing Mr. Chatelain in the head with the purple peacock vase to his right and walking out with it. He dismissed the idea, it wouldn’t fit with the house anyway. 

“Is there any more news about that boy they found in the park?” Hannibal took advantage of the rare break in conversation.

Mr. Chatelain tapped the side of his nose. “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. Very few people know about that. Complete shut out I’m afraid.”

“But they can’t keep it secret forever, no? I mean it’s just so fantastical from what you told Nathan. Strung into the trees, nude-”

“And holding a golden cup, I know. They said he’d been posed into the crotch of a high oak, arm outstretched to heaven, cup tied to his hand and hanging out.They needed a ladder to get him out of there. You know I hear the lab boys were disappointed when they found out it wasn’t real gold, just a Mardi Gras prop.”

"Was it true what they say?" Said Hannibal, taking a risk. "He was the Governor's lover?"

"I've heard that... but you old world types always make it sound classy. iI'm almost certain they were just fucking." Chatelain smiled at himself and his quip, relishing a morbid secret shared in refined company. To Hannibal it felt like old times. There was blood in the water alright. 

“Do they know who the boy is? Have they contacted his family?

“Hell if I know. All I know they’re running scared. It looks so much like those, those-what was the chap’s name with the antlers-”

Hannibal counted the sharp objects in the room and the available exits. Pen, letter opener, metal stirrer from the wet bar, his tin julep cup was too thin but he could shatter the crystal sherry glass for a jagged edge. 

“The whatever the name was. They say it looks similar. But this is all second hand club room talk you see. You’d have to bribe or blow the Superintendent of Police to get any facts.”

Hannibal took his first long sip of the mint julep and thought “Certainly it won’t come to that.”

\----------------

Over an early dinner Hannibal related to Will what Mr. Chatelain told him. 

“So we need to get the police reports and photographs if we’re going to do this.” Will took a sip of rye. Hannibal hoped this habit of hard liquor at dinner was short-lived. “Construct a profile.”

“I could break into the police department. Take photos. Make copies.”

The voice in Will’s head returned, this time creaking under the floorboards, “He’s escalating.”

“No that won’t be necessary.”

“You have an idea?”

“I have a plan.” 

\---------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will's hearing voices? From household objects? Sounds like another Bryan Fuller show if you ask me...
> 
> I have a feeling watching Clue would give Will flashbacks, Mr. Green shouting "I didn't do it!"
> 
> Caradoc is an Irish old form of the word Carthage, and Hannibal's namesake was quite the famous Carthaginian. 
> 
> Byron and Shelly, of course, being the dreamboats of the romantic poetry movement. 
> 
> Being Anglophiles, The Chatelain's house is full of English lit asides - "yellow wallpaper" and "Chippendale commode" are references to the short stories "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "Parson's Pleasure." One is about a woman suffering an enforced rest cure and the other about an antique dealing con man. Mrs. Chatelain's "Woodshed" is a oblique turn to "Cold Comfort Farm" where there is something ...nasty in the woodshed. Consider this your foreshadowing.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will goes to his mind palace. It's not fun for anyone.

Will understands police. He used to be one, a homicide detective in Jefferson Parish, walking distance from their kitchen. But understanding them isn’t the same as fitting in with them. Will always identified with the victims *and* the perpetrators, refusing to collapse his empathy into the ‘shoot first ask questions later’ mindset the job fostered. This reluctance to pull the trigger got him stabbed in the shoulder and sentenced to desk duty. It didn't help him socially, he was already an over-serious do gooder in a jockish, insular, faux-military Hooyah culture. But it did teach him how stagnant and slow to change the PD’s world was and how their computer systems worked. He’s hoping they hadn’t changed a thing since he left them for graduate school.

All it took was some social media stalking of officers with the right clearance level, people likely to be assigned to the case, A few fake mailing lists sent to their public emails, carefully worded to appeal to their interests. All they’d have to do is enter a mailing address and create a password to claim a free 20% off coupon for truck cleaning services, jet ski rentals, beer of the month club, whatever. Will only needed a few passwords associated with names, a second hand laptop, and hope that not only did the NOPD use the same username format but that some officers are lazy enough to use same password for everything.

Will and Hannibal sit on a bench in the city square across the street from a police-popular bar. “The bar’s wifi is unsecured. If they check the logs it’ll look like it’s coming from the bar, but we’re as far away as possible so no one sees us in the bar.”

“No need to worry about bartenders with a gift for faces. When did you learn all this?”

“I watched a Youtube video.” Will loads the access page for the NOPD intranet, remote access a recent convenience for the smartphone savvy officer on the go.

“Good to know.” says Hannibal. He doesn’t see how this is any different or better than breaking in and making a few copies. It involves far less lying for one thing. But the fluctuations of Will’s moral compass are intriguing enough on their own. Hannibal leans in closer. 

It only took two tries. Thank you Forensic Specialist Erskine for always using ThunderPerfectCat22.

Will copies all the relevant reports and photographs to a USB drive. 30 minutes later they take the laptop apart in an alleyway and toss the hard drive into the dumpster of a seafood restaurant. 

\------------

They went out to lunch, discussing everything but the USB thumb drive full of crime scene photos burning a hole in Will’s pocket. Delaying the moment. Elongating it. They wait until dusk to haul the pale green circular dining table out of storage and set it in front of the kitchen window.

“It’s funny, this didn’t feel like a dining room until we put it in.” Will says, 

“Things are what we name them. Like Adam in the garden.” Hannibal arranges the printouts from the USB drive as carefully as plating a main course. “Are you ready? You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“I want to.” Will says, almost shaking his head as he says it, his somatic reflexes in revolt. 

Will looks down at the photos of Connor Smythe on the Medical Examiner’s slab. He closes his eyes.

Darkness falls. A pendulum swings. 

\-------------- 

A tree. That’s all there is, a tree. A thick black oak stretching into the vault of heaven. Connor Smythe’s naked body lies at the root of the tree, at Will’s feet. It’s snowing in that place, a light flurry in all directions. Connor is past caring, a smile frozen on his face, skin white as snow. Will knows the cold can’t hurt him here.

Will examines the body. “My victim is known to me. There are no signs of struggle or injury. “ Will takes Connor’s body in one arm, as if it’s made of air, and digs his other hand into the black oak bark. 

“The bruises on my victim’s wrists and feet mean Connor was alive when I bound him. His skin is freshly washed and his hair recently conditioned and combed. I want him to look good for his big day.” Will begins to lift himself up the black oak, Connor’s wraith-body slung over his shoulder. “It is important I don’t scar or disfigure him.” Will climbs up the tree into the falling snow, hands and feet sinking into the bark like stiff dough, like he was an animal made for climbing.

“Toxicology report indicates he was heavily sedated hours before death. Cause of death most likely an intentional overdose of them.” said Hannibal, there now at the bottom of the tree. Will turns to look down at him. He looks so far away.

Will turns his head back and he’s in the crotch of the great black oak, where the main trunk diverges. The air is full of branches. “I place him on a thorny throne, something to be worshiped. Admired from below. Seen.“ Will arranges Connor’s body to match the photographs, getting the golden cup tied tight at just the right angle to hit the rising sun. 

“I am careful and deliberate. Nothing left to chance.” He ties Connor’s arm to the higher branch, twisting his fingers into a welcoming gesture. “I am confident I won’t be interrupted or caught.”

“A Parks or Municipal worker?” asks Hannibal from below, circling the tree. “Or somebody dressed as one?”

“Maybe maybe.” said Will, slightly lost in Mr. Smythe’s jawline and eyelashes. He had skin like marble, a long but compact frame, the type favored by the archaic Greek sculptors - kouros.

“Seeing it from this angle.” said Hannibal from the bottom of the tree. “Reminds me of something.”

There is a faint flutter, the wings of a monstrous bird, and then Hannibal is with him on a nearby branch. He holds a sketch out to Will.

“It’s Cubero’s Ganymede, rotated into reclining and rendered in flesh. Minus the eagle.”

Will sees it immediately. “Ganymede was Zeus’ cup bearer, a mortal elevated to bask in his presence.”

The fluttering sound again. Hannibal now sitting on a branch above Will, studying him.

“A mortal taken, stolen from his home by Zeus. Ganymede was given eternal youth by his beloved, as our killer has given Mr. Smythe here.” There’s a gleam in Hannibal’s eye as he talks, waiting for Will’s reaction

“No, this isn’t love.” Will kneels down on the branch to examine Connor closely. “This is cold, analytical, almost ...formulaic. Like he’s recreating something.” Will turns Connor’s head to reveal his neck. “Recreating you.”

Hannibal re-appears closer, leaning against the trunk, next to Connor’s body. “Imitation is how we understand others.” A old sick feeling grows in Will as he hears Dr. Factice’s words coming out of Hannibal’s mouth. Had he told him that part? 

“Any organs taken?” asks Hannibal

“No, the body is completely intact.”

“Such a waste.”

Will turns away from Hannibal’s gaze. He moves his hands through Connor’s hair until they catch on something sharp hidden in his curls.

“Examination revealed flowers and leaves woven into the hair. A flower crown with Pagan overtones. The king in the bough.” 

“That’s mistletoe, the slayer of Baldr, the god of light and purity in the Norse tradition.”

“Our killer is mixing his mythologies.”

“A mash-up artist maybe?” Hannibal smiles like a cat.

“Maybe you’re the Velvet Underground, only twenty people saw you but they all started Chesapeake Ripper cover bands.” The world of branches and snow blurs and shimmers a bit, as if it was about to break. 

“An artist can’t be held responsible for interpretations of his work. “

“No, you just expand what’s possible.”

Hannibal wobbles the branch with his foot. “You’d need an excellent sense of balance to do this. No agoraphobics need apply.”

“And you’d have to be strong enough to manipulate the body and know enough about classical mythology to get cute with it.” The golden cup catches Will’s eye. It’s a prop but not a cheap one. It looks hand-made, a one-off. “And a keen attention to detail.”

The pendulum swings back and Hannibal and Will are in the dining room. Will swallowed a gasp and rubs his eyes. Hannibal puts his hands on Will’s shoulders from behind, waiting to do anything he needs.

“This isn’t revenge or malice or disgust. I don’t even think it’s a message.”

“What is it Will? What is he trying to say?”

Will closes his eyes again. “It’s an announcement. It’s Hello World, get a load of me.”

“Interesting. And what does he plan to do with our attention having captured it?”

Will sighed. “I don’t know. I need a drink.”

“No you don’t.” Hannibal put his head on Will’s shoulder and wraps his arms around his front. “I know what you need.”

And Will, tired, spent, and slightly shaking from crashing back to Earth, falls into Hannibal’s embrace. Feeling, not thinking, about Hannibal's hands (oh what big hands you have) and his mouth (oh what big teeth you have) and his gaze. Who wouldn’t want to see themselves reflected in those big eyes?

From far end of the kitchen, near the pantry, the other voice in Will’s head speaks out in a sharp hiss.

“Idiot.”

\-----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wikipedia dump time!
> 
> Kouros category of Greek Sculpture -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kouros -- free-standing nude statues of young men of noble birth.
> 
> Ganymede -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_(mythology) -- the statue Hannibal mentions -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_%28mythology%29#/media/File:Gan%C3%ADmedes_%28Jos%C3%A9_%C3%81lvarez_Cubero%29_MRABASF_01.jpg
> 
> Baldr -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldr
> 
> (Yes I am a little excited Fuller is doing American Gods )
> 
> Forensic Specialist Erskine is from Greg Erskine who does those bizarre, amazing Hannibal puppet videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEpocd_MXDA Thunder Perfect Cat is his cat.
> 
> "Hello World" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Hello,_World!%22_program


	9. Chapter 9

It’s a languorous sunlit morning Will and Hannibal find themselves in, sitting up in the same bed, drinking coffee. 

Hannibal reads his tablet, looking for any chatter on the body found “near” Audubon park. There isn't any. Will takes a swig off his coffee cup and stretches, cracking his back in three big pops.

“You know I tried operant conditioning on you?”

“Hmm?” Hannibal raises his brow.

“On the houseboat, or just after. I figured if I rewarded you with touch or attention when you behaved, I wouldn’t have to discourage bad behavior because you’d be keyed into the reward behavior. I was pretty strict about it. It worked with the dogs. ”

Will sighed. Hannibal stared at him. 

“In retrospect it’s a bit insulting.” said Will.

Hannibal smiled. “Did it work? Am I domesticated?”

“Positive reinforcement is superior to negative. If you can build a positive habit it’ll erode a negative one. Even Skinner knew that.”

“The carrot is mightier than the stick?” Hannibal put his tablet down and turned over, straddling Will in the bedclothes.

“I hate carrots.” said Will, looking up at Hannibal with bed head. He’s still not used to seeing Hannibal without his hard gloss and fashion. Just seeing him sleepy-eyed and disheveled was an exercise in Jamis Vu, the familiar made strange. Strange to think how familiar Hannibal is to him now, like how you can't smell your own house. 

“Why is that? Did a carrot kill your grandmother?” Hannibal moves into Will’s chest, kissing his nipple and shoulder.

Will rubbed Hannibal’s thigh on his hip. “When you get free school lunches the vegetable is usually peas and carrots, or stewed carrots, or carrot sticks. I got really sick of carrots.” 

Hannibal turned up and bit Will’s earlobe. "Let me roast carrots for you, coated in honey and cumin.” Hannibal squeezed his legs around Will’s hips. Will protested.

“I’ve got work to do.”

“That clock’s been broken since 1922, it can wait a day.” Hannibal leaned in for a kiss, a kiss with teeth. Will melted, ready again to be inside those big eyes.  
\-----


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will's metaphorical inner demons briefly become literal external demons. Dinner and a show is promised.

Mardi Gras World, a huge factory warehouse by the river, is Will’s first stop. He has a meeting with Karl O’Mara, one of the production managers, to look at some carefully cropped photos of the golden cup to see if it came from his team. There’s a pretty good chance it did, Mardi Gras World has done all the elaborate mega-floats for the parade for decades. The warehouse itself is a vast array of half-finished jester heads and fantasy sets blooming forth fields of paper mache’ flowers with programmable LEDs. Santa’s workshop on an industrial scale. Will sits outside O’Mara’s office, taking in the cavernous display room and factory floor where dreams are designed, constructed, glued, screwed, broken down, discarded, and re-purposed.

There’s a deep pool of fabricators, set designers, costume makers and prop makers in town, even before you count the professional float builders working year round. New Orleans has always attracted artists, an entire city’s worth of ad hoc stagecraft majors. Any one of them with the skills and equipment to make a man into mythology. All it would take is the spark of imagination and the will to achieve it.

*You’re thinking like him*

The voice inside Will’s head comes from a mask hanging on the wall beside a plastic tub of beads. It’s a satyr mask with a drunken grin. Its beard and billy-goat horns spray-painted red, the middle point of a change to a more traditional devil costume. It reeks of fresh paint, turning toward it makes Will’s eyes water.

“I’m trying to catch a murderer. I have to think like one.” Will begins arguing with himself.

*Of course he’d set it up like that. That’s what he does. You don’t have to pretend to think like one. You’re a murderer Will. A walking, talking suicide.*

“I’ve saved more people than I’ve killed. I’m saving people everyday I keep him from killing.”

*So you decide who lives and who dies? What does that make you, Will Graham?*

“I’m his keeper. I’m a survivor.”

*You’re a coward. You should’ve held him under water til he stopped moving. Like his parents should’ve done when he crawled into the world. You didn’t even have the courage not to curl up into his bed.*

“We’re better together. I’m better with him.”

*You mean you need him, maybe more then he needs you. Oh he’s got hooks in you, Will Graham, you’re even running his errands. Next you’ll be sitting and playing fetch. You’re pathetic. *

“I made my decision and I’m living with it. He didn’t give me much choice.”

*There’s always a choice* Will noticed two workmen hacking away at a Styrofoam mermaid, their knives catching the overhead light. 

“Mr. van Meegeren?” Will looks up to greet Karl O’Mara, a lanky man in a paint-stained skeleton t-shirt, work boots, and the perpetually preoccupied expression of line managers everywhere. 

“Mr. O’Mara, thanks for taking the time to meet with me. Here are the photos I told you about.” Will gets up and hands Karl the photos, putting his back to the smiling devil mask. 

“This does look like the stuff we did for Bacchus two ...three years ago. See the interlocking grape vine motif on the edge? We’re the only ones who used a trellis pattern that year.”

“So the cup in this photo could only have come from here?”

“Well not really. A lot of stuff ends up in second-hand stores by St. Patrick’s Day. Ask over at Le Garage on Decatur if they’ve seen it recently.”

The St. Patrick’s Day parade. Will had forgotten all about it but he’s hit with a wave of nostalgia. There’s Will, age 6, holding a pillowcase out to catch as many tossed potatoes and carrots as he could. Picking raggedy produce off the ground and dusting it off. The year the older boys grabbed his bag and he came home with nothing. What would Hannibal think of the tradition? Would he think it’s vulgar? Or would be relish the opportunity to pelt people with cabbages?, 

He thanks Mr. O’Mara for his time and catches one of the cabs lined up in front of Mardi Gras World as another bus full of tourists arrives.

\-----

Le Garage is just that, a garage on Decatur street full to bursting with Stuff. Capes, pins, tiki lamps, flags, old bar stools, viking hats, military uniforms, and boxes upon boxes of feather boas. The constant demand for fresh props and costumes mean heavy inventory churn and Will hopes the cup was memorable enough for the clerk to recall who bought it.

No dice. Guy behind the counter just started working there last week. Maybe come back when the manager is around? Will is about to leave when he hears a familiar voice.

“Mr. van Meegeren!” Mrs. Chatelain is behind him, holding what looks like the guts of several clocks.

“Fancy running into you here, how goes the patient?”

“Steady as ...clockwork. I should be finished with it by next week. Just needs a good spit shine and polish.”

“Wonderful!” Mrs. Chatelain dumps her foraged clock parts on the counter. “Bring it round the Sunday of, you can stay for family dinner.”

“That’s very kind of you Mrs. Chatelain but I’d hate to impose on your-”

“No imposition at all. G.J kept saying Mr. Caradoc was the finest conversationalist he’s ever met. Bring him along with the clock, I’ll roast a chicken.” 

Resistance was futile. Will had a dinner date with the Chatelains for next Sunday. He wondered if Hannibal would be up for faking their deaths again.

\---------------------

Will takes goes home and changes into a running outfit. He needs to have a long, hard jog and not think for a while. He ends up in Audubon Park, at the oak path where Connor’s body was found. There’s a team of Parks Department men in uniform wrapping the trunk of the tree in plastic and spraying.

Will’s heart rate, which he’d been trying to raise the entire run, shoots through the goddamned roof.

“What’s wrong with the trees?” He asks a supervising worker. She’s covered head to toe in protective gear.

“Fungal blight. Must’ve come in on one of the visitors. We’re trying to contain it to this tree.” She picks up a fallen leaf. Half of it has turned black, like it was dipped in ink.

“These are old oaks, we can’t lose hundreds of years of growth to an invasive infestation.” Will nods his head and moves on, watching groundskeepers carefully collect the black, corrupted leaves into bio-hazard bags.

Then another jogger nearly runs into Will. The jogger turns to apologize but has a flash of recognition and stops.

“Mr. van Meegeren right? The clock guy? We met at Chatelain house?”

It’s Beaux ‘Bo’ Williams-Forrest, all 6’2 golden tanned football star of him squeezed into running shorts and a tank top.”You look like you’ve seen a ghost sir.” He takes a swig off his water bottle, then offers it to Will.

“Oh yes- I was just thinking about the trees. It’d be a shame to lose them.” Will takes a sip from the water bottle, mostly to keep his foot out of his mouth. 

“Everything goes sometime.” Bo starts stretching, flexing even. He smells like clean laundry and citrus. Fresh and innocent as a daisy.”So we’re having you for dinner on Sunday?”

Will gives Bo a careful look. “Word travels fast.”

“Mama Chatelain loves to text.” Bo takes his water bottle back and removes his tank top, patting himself dry.

“Is he. ....posing?” thinks Will, unable to parse how intentional this is.

“Hey” Bo puts his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Why is there touching?!” shouts a primal part of Will’s brain. He’s half convinced he’s going to wake up on the couch with his head in Hannibal’s lap.

“Theo really loves her typewriter. You do great work.” Bo pats him on the back.

“Thank you?” Will’s eyes have locked onto the space just above Bo’s eyebrows. He has to look up a bit to keep them there.

Bo wads his shirt into a ball and starts running in place. “See you on Sunday!” He turns to jog away “Come hungry!” Bo runs off. Will walks the long way home in the other direction. So much for not thinking.

\-------------

Later, with his head in Hannibal’s armpit rather than his lap, Will says

“Bo hit on me in the park today.”

Hannibal, who’d been reading and absentmindedly stroking Will’s hair, doesn’t break stride.

“How curious. Theodora came into the shop today looking for a print, blushing and batting her eyes to beat the band. She even had a soda bottle with a straw to sip on. That one was old when I was young.”

“Southern hospitality. Did she buy anything?”

“A print of Escher’s ‘Bond Of Union’. I overcharged her.”

“Bo had a water bottle too, he practically thrust it at me. That’s from Ovid isn’t it? Art of Love? Getting someone to drink out of your cup?”

“From the section on seducing married women in fact. They were awfully smart about it, too bad they sent the wrong one to you.”

“No I think they sent the right one.” Hannibal’s hand stops. “If I thought for a second a teenage girl was coming on to me I’d go into panic mode, see through that instantly. But, six foot shirtless jocks aren’t even on my radar. I was so thrown by it I didn’t have time to think of ulterior motives.”

“If he touches you I’ll cut off his hands and put them on the mantel.”

“No mounted head over the fireplace then?”

“Please Will.” Hannibal resumes petting him. “I’m not completely tasteless.”

“What is going on in that house?”

“I suppose we’ll find out Sunday.” Hannibal turns a page. “I do enjoy dinner and show.”

\------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mardi Gras World http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/la/LANORmardi_ks21_620x300.jpg
> 
> Le Garage -- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Le_Garage_Decatur_Street.jpg
> 
> Escher's "Bond Of Union" -- http://www.wikiart.org/en/m-c-escher/bond-of-union


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This dress.” She said, words coming back to her from the drug haze. “--Is ridiculous.”

Will and Hannibal lie in bed in a borderline state between resting and sleep. Will had one of Hannibal’s custom cigarettes after dinner and found himself inside nostalgic reverie, replaying the Best Of The Will And Hannibal Show behind his eyes. Hannibal’s blend was better than a madeleine.

Then came another memory, terrible and sudden, like finding a spider in your salad. It was from the end of their honeymoon on the run when they checked the news for unsolved murder cases. Those wild, righteous, bloody months. They stopped when Hannibal insisted they tie up one loose thread. Will said yes, he didn't want the party to end. 

She didn’t even bother to hide, still making a mint on the Hannibal Lecter lecture circuit. She practically left the door open for them. 

When Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, ex-bride, ex-analyst, and ex-captive of Hannibal Lecter came to at the dining table, seated before her own roast and seasoned leg, she wasn’t surprised. She hid an oyster fork in her fist as Will and Hannibal walked into the room.

“This dress.” She said, words coming back to her from the drug haze. “--Is ridiculous.”

Hannibal smiled and walked toward her. “I thought it best to show you off. You resemble a great work of antiquity now. The marble admired even more for being broken.”

Bedelia jabbed at Hannibal’s face with the oyster fork fist. Hannibal dodged, knocking the fork from her hand with a wrist chop.

“My marble has enough cracks thank you. Although I can’t fault you for wanting to add a few of your own." 

“Oh no.” Bedelia felt Will snatch her wrists and tie them behind her chair. “You’re going to talk through the whole thing.” 

Hannibal sat next her, arranging a napkin in his lap.

“I hoped we could be civil to one another. If that is not the case, you will be spoon fed. Like a child.”

Bedelia laughed. “Rich coming from you. Toddlers throw tantrums when they don’t get what they want. You throw people out windows. He couldn’t control it in Florence you know, not for any length of time. Something akin to incontinence.” Bedelia hissed. For a woman who carried herself as cold and distant as the stars, this was something else. Heated, snarling, contemptuous, sarcastic even. She was possessed, a Fury, something omniscient standing in the doorway between life and death. 

“I thought I was making a deal with the Devil, not a lovesick brat. Imagine my disappointment.”

Will stands close between Hannibal and Bedelia as if waiting for a cue. Bedelia turns to Will.

“I thought you’d be smart enough to see through that. More disappointment. I hate to break it to you Will but there’s nothing under that suit. Just a lacuna, a conspicuous absence of something. A mine-shaft taking the place of a person.” She raised her head high, neck exposed, practically begging for it to be slit. “ A delusional psychopath who fancies himself God, isn’t that original?”

Hannibal pressed his lips together as he reached for the carving knife.

“Interesting analysis Dr. Du Maurier.” Hannibal carved a slice of her still warm leg. 

“Just kill me, if only to spare me another session with you two. You’re not the only analyst who gets bored with their patients Dr. Lecter. All that wasted effort. Guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“You misunderstand Bedelia. You’ve been instrumental in making me the man I am today. I thank you for that.”

“Hooray for me.” Bedelia’s eyes move to her empty wine glass. 

“Pour our guest some wine Will.”

Will poured a glass and put a plastic straw from Bedelia’s wet bar in it. He held it to her face as she look a long sip.

“Montrachet, again?” Bedelia rolled her eyes. “Pathological repetition.” She finished off the wine in another go.

“Another.”

\--------------

The dinner was grim and unrewarding. Bedelia’s bitter laughs and jabs grew broader and deeper with each glass. She ate herself, commenting how rotten she tasted and wondering if Hannibal planned to keep her alive as a head in a jar. A brain that wouldn’t die. That was always his problem she said, knowing when to let go. Thinking people can change.

They didn’t finish the meal, Bedelia soured Hannibal’s appetite. It was humane in the end, how they killed her. They planned it that way. Not an ongoing humiliation like Abel Gideon but something like mutual respect for a worthy foe. Bedelia, it seemed, didn't share that respect.

They composted her body, grinding it fine and slop-like. They mixed it into the soil of a large and impressive white rosebush deep in the woods near Baltimore. Something beautiful, thorny, and hidden.

It colored their days and weeks after. Hannibal became unpredictable, sloppy, almost maudlin. He asked more and more and more of Will until Will issued his ultimatum: No more killing. Not even child stranglers and puppy mill owners. This stops or they stop, forever. They sink into the shadows and become the stuff of late-night TV and cheap paperbacks, something to scare your children with if they don't eat their vegetables.

Hannibal bought the house on Constance street a day later. Everything else was burned to the ground.

\-----------------

The memory of the Last Bad Dinner fades as Will further dissolves into sleep. He imagines himself nude in the wood, wild as an animal, taking careful steps to avoid trampling the young growth. He comes upon a bower of white roses, looming and immense. The flowers are overgrown and fecund, drooping and decaying. 

It's offensive to him. It does not belong here. 

This wild Will begins tearing into the rose bower, ripping it apart with his hands and teeth. He rages, screaming while thorns lash against every exposed and tender side. He bloodies the white roses red, gnashing them in his mouth. His tongue ripped and raw, bleeds down his throat, filling his gut with blood. The flavor is overwhelming and arousing. He starts greedily licking his arms clean, hungry like no man or beast alive has been hungry. He sucks his fingers free of blood and then, with his jaw on his knuckle, bites his finger off and chews.

Will wakes up in a cold sweat, the first time in a long time. Hannibal has already brought breakfast in bed. Will hears the shower running and watches steam rise from cup of coffee on the tidy silver tray. Next to it, the long almond biscotti sat arranged like an open palm.

\------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" -- popular MST3k B-movie about a mad scientist who keeps his wife's head alive (in a pan) while she conspires with another experiment to kill him. 
> 
> painting the roses red anyone?
> 
> The voice in Will's head has a name and it's pissed.
> 
> will's auto-cannibalism is meant to reference Aethon/ Erysichthon of Thessaly, from Ovid, who cut down Demeter's grove and was given an insatiable hunger that leads to him eating himself.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a dinner party but for once the Ripper isn't providing the meat

Late Sunday afternoon, Will and Hannibal arrive at Chatelain House with the restored clock. Will had dressed up for the evening, putting himself in professional light corduroy and clubish necktie. Hannibal dressed down, sporting an open collar and an almost inappropriately boyish blue blazer and sandy tan pants. Even his hair was floppier and less fussed with then Will’s slicked back high and tight. The combined effect blurred their ages and bearing together, creating these new people called Nathan van Meegeren and James Caradoc. 

After the clock was presented and placed in situ to much praise and examination, dinner was served. The dining room itself, a long wood-paneled box with neo-gothic embellishments, resembled the inside of a confessional. Dinner started stiffly. Mrs. Chatelain wanted to and could talk about every step of the clock’s restoration with Will til dessert. Theodora and Bo discussed school matters and Hannibal was tricked into a long anecdote about hunting courtesy of Mr. Chatelain after asking about the stuffed pheasant on the sideboard.

“What do you think of these fox hunting bans Mr. Caradoc?” said Theodora, saving Hannibal from another hunting story.

“I think it’s a shame to abandon such an ancient and noble tradition because it offends modern sensibilities. The old ways have a way of returning unexpectedly when driven underground.”

Will got goosebumps. The music was starting, the old dance beginning again and Hannibal couldn’t wait to take Will out on the floor and show him off. It’d been so long since they waltzed like this. So long since they had a suitable audience. 

Part of Will was giddy, anxious to begin. The other part, the cold thorny part, said

“Don’t get lost in his cleverness Mr. Graham. Or your own.” 

Dinner arrived in a mixture of English and American style. Each course was brought out by a white-haired man in shirtsleeves apparently called Bennington. It wasn’t clear if he was hired help or an old family member or some arcane combination of the two. He didn’t speak unless spoken to. He had familiar kitchen scars and burns running down his arms and seemed to flinch slightly when putting plates down near Bo.

The salad course gave Will a first position. It was tomato and watermelon and he began to tell the story of jumping a fence with a stolen watermelon. He changed and elided details, but his heart drained out of it halfway through, when the voice inside his head reminded him the last time he told this story, it was to Molly.

Hannibal picked him up from conversation free-fall and spun around, taking aim at Bo.

“Aren’t your parents jealous you’re spending Sunday dinner with another family?”

“My parents are lobbyists sir, they’re in D.C half the time anyway. The Chatelains been kind enough to take a poor orphan in.”

“He sleeps at his family’s place down the road.” Mrs. Chatelain added, suddenly concerned with propriety.

“That must give you plenty of free time.” Hannibal said. 

“Time to chew the fat.” Will said, innocent deniability all over his face. Hannibal smiled. Theodora, under the guise of dabbing at her mouth with a napkin, shot A Look. Enter Player Two.

The main course came, roast plum glazed squab stuffed with seasoned creole rice and braised fennel. Not as much meat as Hannibal would like but he enjoyed the nods to season and location.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had squab, why is that you think?” Will said, picking up his fork.

“That's because you and I would call it pigeon.” Mr. Chatelain scoffed, finishing off his wine so Bennington could refill it. “Marketing twaddle.”

“There’s power in a name” Hannibal said. “Few would order Chilean Seabass if we called it bottom-feeding Patagonian Toothfish.”

Mr. Chatelain laughed. “Or if we called crayfish river bugs.”

“Actually my dear I think some folk call them bugs.” said Mrs. Chatelain.

Mr. Chatelain was about to go into a very familiar “That’s not what I meant dear” aside when Bo spoke up.

“If you want to make something palatable, you give it another name. Like how one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.”

Will was shocked. It never occurred to him Bo might be insightful. 

“Or that the difference between murder and execution is who's holding the badge.” Will said.

Mr. Chatelain pursed his lips like he was about to Have A Speech but a quick under the table jab by his wife deflated him.

“There’s a good reason we call it squab.” Said Theodora, taking a small sip of water. “Any pigeon you’d see out pecking cigarette butts is too old to be eaten. Pigeons for dining have to be young enough not to fly out of a cage. The tenderness comes from being newly hatched and fed a fattening diet. That’s why we call them squab, so we don’t think we’re eating baby birds.”

Theodora lifted a baby bird leg to her mouth. “Squab is an ugly word anyway, I’d call them mourning doves.” She took a bite as punctuation. She was good. 

Hannibal sat at full attention, curled and ready to pounce. Will could taste his eagerness to strike. It bounced off into Will, the rush, watching a real expert in the game.

“Are you very interested in cooking?”

“Oh yes. It incorporates so many different things, from history to animal husbandry to chemistry. It’s the only art form you need to live.”

“Except architecture.” said Bo. 

“And have you gone far in your studies?”

“Oh this and that. I’ve got cheerleading and volunteering so I mostly learn what I can at home. Bennington’s been helping me with knife skills. I can follow a recipe well but I don’t think I’ve really Gotten it yet, you know, that chef’s sense?”

“I have some books I could lend you, less recipes and more theory. “

“I’d like that Mr. Caradoc.” 

Will, once again eating and drinking as an excuse to observe, was feeling something alien. Something new. It wasn't fear the dance would be broken and they’d be exposed - no one is going to accuse you of being cannibal murder husbands over dinner - but a sudden hot, angry feeling.

It was jealousy. He was jealous of a teenage girl who liked to cook. 

“Everybody needs a hobby.” said Mrs. Chatelin and Mr. Chatelain smiled in agreement. “Life would be so much more dull without them.”

“If you only knew” thought Will. 

\---------------

Dessert (peach sorbet, baked figs, salted peanuts) was served with a glass of brandy for the adults and a small measure of port for the teens. The conversation winding down as people drank and digested, Hannibal and Theodora mostly discussing obscure dining practices. They were in a good natured row about aspic replacing jellyfish as a mouth-feel cleanser between courses when Bo broke up the food talk.

“Mr. Caradoc, Theo tells me you’ve lived in Italy before coming here.”

“Among other places, but Italy is very close to my heart.”

“What’s your favorite part?” Hannibal knew a trap when he smelt one. 

“Venice. The island empire. Baffling to outsiders and Italians alike. You’ll never actually see it unless you’re invited into the grand palazzos and make friends with the old families.”

Hannibal turned to Mr and Mrs Chatelain. “A bit like Savannah.” They nodded. Hannibal continued. 

“The merchant princes of Venice wanted everyone addicted to Venetian miracles, especially glass-making. So when someone found a new way of making glass or had a particularly fine style, the Princes would bring them and their families to Murano island. They’d give them a fine workshop and bags of gold and told them if they ever spoke a word about how they made clear glass or flat-mirrors, they’d kill their entire family. Not bad for a life-time contract if you ask me.”

“That seems harsh for a little cross-trade talk.” Mr. Chatelain said.

“We use Non-Disclosure Agreements now. The first goal of any business is obtaining a monopoly. Make buyers dependent on you alone. Then you have all the power.” Will swirled his brandy around the crystal tumbler. 

“Why did they trade with Venice at all then? Why not go around them, like in a free market-” 

Theodora interrupted Bo. 

“Venice was the only Christian route to the east. There was a papal ban on trading with unbelievers.”

Hannibal smiled at her. “The things men do for silk and cinnamon.”

Will knew that was a threat, but he couldn’t figure out who it was for.  
\--------------

Walking through the park, post dinner goodbyes and promises to stay in touch, Will counts the number of trees with plastic anti-fungal wraps around them. Three. It was only one last time.

“What a fascinating family.” Hannibal said, walking leisurely and conspicuously. Promenading. He had a glow. “We should see more of them.”

“I’m just happy they didn't suggest an orgy.” Will was slightly behind, hunched over in thought.

“Now that would’ve been interesting.” Hannibal said. Will couldn’t begrudge him for having fun playing with his new toy. Even if the toy was a family that wandered out of a Tennessee Williams play. They seem harmless and eccentric enough, but too many things didn’t add up. Too many exact references and knowing looks. Like PrepCute87 said. The whole thing stinks. 

“Do we think it’s them? Do we think they think we suspect them?” asked Will.

“Too early to tell. This could all be some unlucky coincidence. Finding meaning in random noise and happenstance, like seeing the Virgin Mary in a taco.” 

“You’re not taking this seriously. I like it here. I like us here. We have a nice life. I won’t let that be threatened by some Sweet Valley High Sociopaths.”

Hannibal smiled, enjoying Will’s torment a little too much. “Come now Will, we don’t know anything for sure. Let’s not jump at every creak in the floorboards.”

“Someone is copying Ripper techniques and the police know about it.”

“Possibly. Don't hang your head so much. We’ve got things under control. For now, lookup. The stars are out and we’re together. They can’t take that away.”

“Not yet.” Will thought. He took a deep breath of the moist night air and situated himself in the now. Jasmine on the breeze. The sound of a late backyard party dying down. His husband’s beautiful skin in the moonlight.

“We’ll just have to wait and see.” 

They wouldn’t have to wait long. Soon the entire city would see.

\------------


	13. The Stars Are Out Tonight

Three weeks pass. The effort of setting up house and daily routine erode away worry about the strung-up Ganymede or the intrigues of Chatelain House. Life took on a distinctly domestic cast: they cooked together, read together, chose fabric samples and went to auctions together. They even picked out curtains. Will’s shop got an unexpected write-up in a niche antiques blog popular with a certain kind of monied tourist in denial that they’re monied or tourists.

The article used some of Theodora’s Instagram photos of her typewriter and Will wondered if that was a social media olive branch. ‘Don’t rat me out and I’ll make you a trending topic’ maybe. Will saw an uptick in orders for repair and restoration and the Museum even got back to him about the scale-model streetcar proposal. For the immediate future at least, Will felt like he had the wind at his back. 

Hannibal leaves for his store every day and returns promptly by 6 each night. Sometimes they meet for lunch while Will runs errands over town. There’s always a lightbulb to replace or more soap to buy or herbs to stock and faucet fixtures to install. When not working on a project, Will’s days are a series of plant watering, bed making, and laundry folding. The routines are comfortable and familiar, easy to get lost in. Which is why during one trip it took him a while to realize he’s being followed. 

He's at Bayu Market, a local grocer surrounded by one-story bungalows and traditional columned porches. Will selects greens for dinner when he notices the top of a baseball cap poking out from the dried rice and spices section. He remembers seeing another baseball cap on his walk there. He bent down to pet Mrs. Roisson’s beagle/pug mix, Pumpkin, and noticed a tall man in a black t-shirt, cap, and sunglasses leaning against the lamppost. 

Will walked into the aisle, pretending to search the paprika rack. The baseball cap man darted the instant Will rounded the corner. Will went on shopping, tracking the top of the baseball cap through the store. Will lost him somewhere around cereal and didn’t see him again until he reached the cashier. The man in the baseball cap walked past the front of the store, no shopping bag, his head turned just enough to keep Will from getting a good look. If baseball cap was tailing him, he needed more practice.

Will left the shop in prickly alertness, senses suddenly keyed up and firing on some ancestral memory of being hunted. 

“Don’t be paranoid” He said to himself. Himself answered

*Just cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. And you thought running away with him meant no more looking over your shoulder.*

Will, now aware of every person and alleyway and shadowy porch in a three block radius, walks briskly to the bar on the corner. He does not look over his shoulder.

“Usual Mr. Mee?” said the bartender as Will put his shopping on the barstool and nodded. He pointed to the bathroom and walked off, going not into the bathroom but out the back door into the driveway that connected back to the main street. Will crept up to the corner, just enough to see baseball cap man sit at the bar’s outdoor table. His back was to the door and he looked buried in his phone. From this angle, Will could make out the broad frame and ski-slope nose of Bo Williams-Forrest. 

Will walked back round through the back door and sat down at the bar, his bourbon and rocks waiting for him. He takes out his phone and calls Hannibal

\-----------

Hannibal Lecter gets off the phone with Will. He’s in his bright and orderly shop off Esplanade, seated at the old druggist’s counter he salvaged to display books. He thought that was hilarious, art as a drug. He searches through a few shelves of thick-spine journals and pulls out a blue soft-bound book -- more of a chapbook really, a translated version put out by an academic publisher. He writes a note in fluid script and sticks it like a bookmark between the pages.

He hasn’t felt this excited in a while.

\-----------

The next morning, a new display premiered in double bay windows of Aint Them Saints Gallery on Julia Street. It was quickly noticed by locals and tourists, Instagramed and tweeted and posted and re-posted. It wasn’t, as news making window displays go, very graphic or radical. Weird, yes. Weirder for being in the conservative Julia Street antiques row and even weirder for being in a gallery known for pleasing local folk art, but nothing macabre.

The left window contained a figure in a windowpane suit and paisley tie, arms outstretched, strung with ceiling wires and festooned with gold Mardi Gras beads. On his head, an oversize rubber donkey mask painted white.

The right window had a silver-painted figure arranged with ropes to appear stretching and walking off a Styrofoam sculpture pedestal. At its feet was a nude, head-less mannequin, arms up to grasp the answered prayer. The headless mannequin was clearly plastic, no more detailed than a Ken doll, but the silver statue model was much more life-like. Demure half-toga around its waist. Hair and everything. Probably latex people said. 

In red letters behind the left window were painted BY THE STARS and in the left WE ARE KNOWN. The gallery itself was closed for a few days so no one could get an answer to what, exactly, this was. Probably some promotional thing, people said. It faded into the background within a day. 

When gallery owner Mimi Stephens returned to her store after a difficult funeral in Texas, she thought it was some kind of joke. Some kind of terribly unfunny awful joke. She opened the door to the Gallery, wondering aloud who thought they’d get away with this. She poked the donkey-headed mannequin, surprised by its weight and heft. The donkey mask was hanging loose, so she reached up and pulled it off. 

When she saw the bloody, bashed in head under the mask, she screamed so loud the neighbors called the police. 

\-----------------------

Theodora Marie Chatelain opened the butcher-paper wrapped package addressed to her in the front hall. It was a floppy blue book, “Almanach des Gourmands” by Alexandre Laurent Grimod de la Reynière, 1803. First English Translation. She opened to the pages with the thick cream card stuck between them

“Talleyrand said that there are two things essential in life: to give good dinners and to keep on fair terms with women. I hope you find this enlightening. - James Caradoc.” 

Theodora beamed. He really did have beautiful handwriting. She scanned the page the note was in, eyes hitting the last section -

“The young wild boar, which we can regard as the heir presumptive to the king of our forests, is not presented other than having been spit-roasted; they are stuck all over, with the exception of the neck and head, with small bacon pieces, and it is served as a roast. It passes for a delicate dish, of good flavor; and its flesh, although nourishing, is easily digested; nevertheless, delicate persons — those whose digestive juices lack that activity that can make of an ordinary man a true Gourmand — would be prudent to abstain from it. The young wild boar, in spite of his noble and wild origin, does not merit the cost of indigestion.”

\-------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so finally we get to the PLOT. I had to tell you 12 chapters to get to this story. The title is from David Bowie's The Stars (Are Out Tonight) the video being a ..particular inspiration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH7dMBcg-gE
> 
> Yep. They are literally picking out curtains together. 
> 
> The displays are, of course more classical myths. I'll get into detail next chapter but I think it's obvious. The white painted donkey mask is a side reference to the horror movie "You're Next." I think it looks like this oone http://www.amazon.com/Forum-Deluxe-Adult-Donkey-Mask/dp/B0018JZ3X6
> 
> The idea of a window display itself is from the Wednigo prop being on display in the window of Fuller + Roberts, the store Fuller co-owns with his partner. 
> 
> Hannibal's card is quoting M. F. K Fisher, one of the finest food writers/essayists ever.
> 
> And he gives her a real book! With a real quote! It's from this translation, which is the first English Translation! - you can read the whole thing here - http://www.almanachdesgourmands.com/?page_id=11


	14. Avid Fans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Membership in the Hannibal Lecter fanclub seems to be growing at an alarming rate.

“They’re making fun of us.” Hannibal stood over a spread of newspaper photographs of the murder scene. Will sat at the table knee-deep in his rye bourbon, not bothering with ice. He scowled at the photographs like he was trying to set them on fire.

“The man in the suit. That’s one of my old suits, same make and tailoring. It’s the one I was wearing in the first Tattle Crime article I appeared in, the one about you.”

Will tapped the rim of his glass. “King Midas. Everything you touch turns to gold.” He put the glass down on the photograph of the gold Mardi Gras beads wrapped around the man’s arms. 

“It’s further along in the story. After Midas’ curse is removed, he’s given donkey ears as penitence. He hides them under his cap, but someone whispers the secret to the reeds which repeat it in every babbling brook. “

“Am I your donkey ears?” Will was deadly serious.

“As for you.” Hannibal picked up a picture of the second crime scene, the man painted silver and arranged on a pedestal. 

“The story of Pygmalion, a sculptor so in love with his creation that he prays for it to come to life until his prayers are answered.”

“It’s not nice to be called an object. It’s very-" Will clenches his jaw. “Objectifying.”

“Better then a humiliated king? The psychological nuance is unusual in ones so young. It’s a play on dual transformation, skin to gold, stone to flesh. One story reverses the other. I wonder if they had outside help.”

“They wanted us to know it was them. They put them up somewhere they couldn’t be ignored or covered up. Hidden in plain sight like that. That’s something even you couldn’t pull off.” Will sits back, darkly drinking, marinating himself as more and more news of the double homicide came in.

“All victims available through their parent’s social groups, even the gallery owner so they’d know when the gallery would be closed. Might as well have signed it.”

“Was Mrs. Stephen’s father’s death suspicious in any way?”

“Oh come now Will. Even I didn’t plan that far ahead.” Hannibal smiled. Will glared. He wasn’t having it, not tonight. 

“They killed three people. try not to make jokes.”

“I’m completely serious. Who knows how organized they are? And maybe it isn’t such a tragic loss for the city.” 

The two bodies in the display window where Jonas Highstreet and Lee Earl Riley. Both were under active federal investigations for corruption. Jonas was accused of bribing legislators on behalf of the big fracking interests and Lee Earl was suspected of channeling funds from a widow and orphans charity into private accounts. Both were killed by a strong blow to the head, possibly a hammer. Both were no more than two degrees removed from the Chatelains and Williams-Forrests. Both had ties to organized crime.

“We may be among fellow travelers.”

Will looked down. “Connor was an innocent.” His face scrunched up into something mean and firm. “We were never like them. They’re killing for kicks. More of your ‘avid fans.’ We were never like that.” Will grimaces as he takes another sip. “And how we where, we’ll never be again. Understood?”

Hannibal gave a small, slow nod. He expertly arranges his person suit around his growing excitement about Will’s fury. The stakes are dazzlingly high.

Because both victims had ties to organized crime the NOPD was playing it up as a bizarre mob hit, but the similarities to the Ripper cases proved too tasty to ignore. Tabloids screamed RIPPER RETURNS? as New Orleanians embraced the two with morbid glee. Meat-heavy Hannibal Lecter lunch menus sprang up. Cafe Lafitte In Exile held a Cannibal Dance Party with 2$ Bloody Will Grahams (the tomato juice replaced with pickleback and blood orange juice). There were pranks and memes and strident calls to stop making light of such a gruesome event. There were T-Shirts. Hannibal seriously considered buying one if he thought for a second he could get away with it.

Earlier that night they caught the end of a World News Tonight interview with Freddie Lounds, the public face of the “Bluffer” movement that maintains Will and Hannibal survived the fall. They have no proof they went over, no bodies were found, the search was rudimentary and rushed, if anyone could fake their own deaths...and so on and so forth. It was an old argument with no proof and she was mostly shilling her book (Catching Madness: The Dangerous True Story Of Two Killers In Love, available online and at fine bookstores this holiday season) but it put the idea they were still out there into everyone’s head.

“We can’t just hide out in here until this blows over. I keep thinking someone’s going to recognize me off a wheat-pasted poster.”

“People see what they want to see. It’s impossible for us to be alive, so we can’t be in the grocery checkout line with them.”

“It -was- impossible, before some insane fanboys decided to make Ripper fanfic and remind everyone we’re an alluring unsolved mystery.” Will dangled his glass a few inches above the table.

“How are we going to deal with this.” He looked up at Hannibal and dropped his glass on the table, letting the thud resonate in the dark house. “-The right way?”

Hannibal nodded. The right way. Will’s way. What is Will’s way? They can’t very well ground them.

Or can they? Hannibal had an idea.

“You were right Will, the first murder was an announcement. This one is a question.” Hannibal leaned in, putting his breath right against Will’s neck. 

“Play with us?”

“We’re not playing their game.” Will finished his rye bourbon and turned, staring Hannibal dead in the face.

“We can’t confront them openly, but we still have to answer the question.” Hannibal leaned back under the overhead light, casting his eyes in shadow and allowing the briefest suggestion of a smile cross his lips.

“We wouldn’t want to be rude.”

\----------------


	15. Closer To The Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal gets his fortune told

“These can’t be real.” Will fingers a necklace of shrunken heads hanging near a sign screaming NO PHOTOGRAPHS! VIOLATORS WILL BE TRANSMOGRIFIED! in dripping yellow letters. They’re in the House Of Vodun, a popular French Quarter shop for all kinds of mystical kitsch.

“Doesn’t matter. Belief makes them real. The same belief that turns plastic chicken feet into sacred relics of divination.” Hannibal shook a bag of neon-colored chicken feet with the label KNOW THE FUTURE? CAST AND SEE. 

Will put the shrunken heads back on the hook. The House Of Vodun was a tourist trap, a dingy shotgun house crowded with antlers and gemstones and dried herb bags, each with handwritten descriptions and retail tags. They had racks and racks of stuff, plastic Tibetan skull bracelets and Haitian fetish dolls and hex bags and saint’s candles and Appalachian poppets. The whole thing was as authentic as the Hannibal Lecter t-shirts sold in Jackson Square. 

“It’s all fake. A marketing gimmick. Just shove any real or made-up belief into a bag and sell it as ritual magic. A souvenir of the old weird South. Who cares if it comes from 400 miles away or 30 years ago? It looks like the stuff on TV.” Will sulked. He knew Cajun lore and superstition. He knew why his neighbors growing up painted their doors blue. These people didn’t whittle wooden idols or bury teeth in cemetery dirt. They didn’t consecrate with spit and blood. This was clean and efficient and commercial. This was ....Disneyland.

“It’s the nature of syncretic religion. The most primal form it can take. Everything mixes and changes into a personal belief inside each practitioner. No two alike and all drawing on images and ideas from the sacred to the profane to the -”

Hannibal gestured to prayer incense for sale. Each bag contained a wish you were supposed to throw onto the fire for it to come true. One section of prayer incense was called SEND HANNIBAL LECTER AFTER SOMEONE. It was very popular. There were only two bags left. 

“-pop culture. It adds to the stew.”

Will glowered again. He'd endured Hannibal's argument that this was a good thing. The more popular they got, the less connected to reality they got. They became folkloric, mythic. Claiming you saw them would be like saying you saw Bigfoot. The fantasy murder husbands would obscure them, making them less distinct and noticeable.

Will wondered what would happen to them in the future. Would they become legends? Fodder for ghost tours and travel pamphlets? In a hundred years would people say “Will and Hannibal” like they said “Bonnie And Clyde”? Or would they become metonymy for Folie a deux? Would people say it was a real “Will and Hannibal” when they talked about mad love? Freddie Lounds’ books already bordered on fiction, would that become canon? The stuff everybody just knows?

He left Will Graham’s name behind a while ago, he wasn’t expecting to encounter it on a cocktail menu. The whole thing felt like cheap mockery, a vulgar appropriation of their private pain. He expected Hannibal to share this, but Hannibal reveled in every corny, bloody version of them out there. He thought it was funny. He liked being famous. Will thought it was reckless. They weren’t stuffed animals you could buy and put on the shelf. 

“Oh well.” Will thought. “At least Chilton isn’t making a dime off it.”

No one is saying “Hannibal The Cannibal” when “Murder Husbands” is public domain.

An older man in denim parted a bead curtain to a room in the back of the shop and turned toward Hannibal, his face framed in ‘African’ dance masks and boar’s heads.

“Madam Stacey awaits.”

Hannibal nodded to Will and passed through the curtain.

They came to The House Of Vodun so Hannibal could meet Madam Stacey, the most highly regarded Tarot reader in New Orleans. Will protested but Hannibal insisted he needed to consult an oracle before moving forward with a plan this big. It was only right to consult the auguries. Besides, he hadn’t watched a cold reader in a while and worried he was rusty. He left Will to poke skeleton bobbleheads and bottles of scared tears.

Hannibal passed through a series of beaded curtains into a small room, no doubt a bathroom or pantry in the original plans. A great pillar of velvet robes and red-henna hair stood by the wall, back turned toward an electric kettle.

“And who is the Querent?” The pillar of hair and velvet turned to reveal a woman in huge brown glasses holding a tray of steaming teacups.

“Mr. Caradoc, Madam Stacey.”

“Please sit.” Madam Stacey put the tray on a small plastic picnic table wedged into the room. There was only one flimsy chair at the table, Madam Stacey sat on an overstuffed ottoman.

Hannibal sat down as Madam Stacey set herself up. She was somewhere between 40 and 400, nothing but big glasses and jewelry and hair. Her dark velvet robes making her look like a floating head and pair of hands in the crowded reading room. She pushes the hair out of her face.

“Such an energy I’m getting from you already.” She picks up a teacup. “I think this will be a very rewarding reading.” 

“I hope so.” Hannibal replies. Madam Stacey takes a sip and gets a good look at her querent. That’s all she really needs. One good look.

She finishes her tea, thankful for the protection of the big brown glasses.

“I’m very honored.”

Hannibal smiles. 

Madam Stacey takes her deck of cards out and begins shuffling.

“What is your question?”

“I'm embarking on a new plan. I wish to see the omens and portents to its success.”

“Are you worried you can’t accomplish it?” Madam Stacey cuts and shuffles, rolling the deck in her fingers.

“I’m not worried about doing it. I’m worried about what it might do.”

“Don’t want to rock the boat?”

“Something like that.”

Madam Stacey cuts the deck on the table.

“My reading is in threes. Balanced aspects. A story told through the cards. Beginning, middle, and end. They may not be the whole story, but they are a story, a way of understanding . Are you ready?” 

Hannibal nods. Madam Stacey takes a deep breath.

“Draw from the right stack.”

Hannibal draws a card from the right deck. It’s a man alone in a field of weapons, his face lost and remote.

“The five of swords. This is conflict, argument. A clash of ideas. “

“Is it painful?”

“Not always. Conflict is often necessary for change to occur, but it could also mean a hollow victory- something in your past returning. Something to be mindful of. Cut the other deck.” 

Hannibal cuts the left deck. He turns over a woman clad in red sitting on a throne with a sword in one hand and a scale in the other.

“Justice.” said Madam Stacey, licking her lips. “Justice in your present informs the five of swords in your past, an argument or disruption now ruled by orderly thoughts. The conflict between selfishness and selflessness mediated. These cards speak to a system in balance.”

Hannibal sweated. It was hot in the dark little backroom. He hadn’t even touched his tea. 

“And the future?”

Madam Stacey took the card stacks and shuffled them, not taking her eyes off Hannibal.

She held the deck out for him to take a card. He pulled one out and placed it on the table. The card showed a brilliant yellow burst of light and color. Madam Stacey gasped.

“The Star.”

“A symbol of revelation, achievement and understanding.” said Hannibal “ Fulfillment.”

Madam Stacey tapped the card. “But also new relationships. New beginnings. Potential. Not the same old same old.”

She leaned in a bit, just enough to get her lips near him.

“It can also mean unwanted attention.” Her voice sank to a whisper. 

“Everyone looks to the stars. Be careful who sees you.” 

\---------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will goes to see a shrink but Hannibal foes to see a tarot reader. The classic myth thing to do would be to ask a seer before doing a thing. Doesn't that always backfire? 
> 
> The store they're in is based on this http://voodooneworleans.com/
> 
> Blue doors are a way to keep out evil spirits in some cajun-y Appalachian folklore. 
> 
> Querent, someone who asks an oracle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Querent 
> 
> Thanks to Tom Blunt for the Tarot advice in this. The stars are out tonight....


	16. Tinted Windows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theo and Bo come home from a party. Will and Hannibal dig something up.

Theodora and Bo drove home from a long weekend at a mutual friend’s lake house. Theo drove. She always drove.

Their friend’s parents where overseas (China? Japan? No one remembered) so the weekend turned into a free-for-all. Broken lamps and kegs and skinny-dipping. The kind of wholesome all-American debauchery they should be getting up to, but after setting up the gallery display window their hearts weren't in it. 

The party was supposed to be a celebration and an alibi, but after the immediate rush faded there was nothing left. Their friends where vapid columns of yapping air. Being drunk and stoned and half-naked lost its appeal. It wasn’t hiding in the linen closet until Mr. Highstreet came home. It wasn’t balancing up a tree in the early morning. It wasn’t sitting down with the Devil and asking if he liked the salad. 

Theo felt exposed the entire weekend, hardly taking off her sunglasses. Everyone just thought she was hungover. They thought that because they were normal. The party was normal. Hadn’t they started this to stop being normal? She’d been waiting for this ever since she walked in on her mom and Will Graham having tea in the garden, talking about typewriters. Why did it feel so hollow? Her excitement and anticipation replaced with a blank space.

“We should kill someone we know.” Bo looked up from his phone. “Like Billy Hamilton, with the stupid beard and cameo shorts. Like, your mom owns every gas station south of D.C, you’re not hunting ducks for a living dude.”

Theo didn’t take her eyes off the road. 

“Or Bella Delacroix. “ Bo’s voice went up an octave into a lisp. “Do you? Like think? She would even? Totes notice?” 

“We can’t kill Bella. All her friends would want to get killed too.” 

“Or- We do someone random. Off the street in broad daylight. That’ll really put blood in the water.”

“We don’t do that.” Theodora almost sang it, like it was a joke, something innocuous. They don’t kill random people. That would defeat the point. They’re on the side of the angels, something shiny to dangle in front of Lecter. Connor was a rookie mistake, an accident, but they improvised. Between them they’ve read every single thing published on Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, from the true crime door-stoppers to Dr. Chilton’s hilariously pompous paper in the Journal Of Abnormal Psychology. They learned a lot about how Lecter improvised. 

“Doesn’t it feel better to kill someone bad?” She asked. Bo shrugged. 

“Makes it easier.”

Bo went back to playing with his phone. Theo frowned, disappointment in Bo was a pebble in her shoe. He was the only one she could trust but he never got it. Never got what it all meant. The power, the finality of it, getting that close to the hot blast furnace of Lecter’s mind. After a kill, she melted into it, imagining what he’d think about it. How he’d do it. Mixing herself with the image of him to come out stronger, like a steel alloy. She didn’t want to stop until she was all metal, hard and bright and unbreakable.

Bo liked hurting people. And the sex afterward. And feeling better and different than everyone else. He was a soft animal thing, something nasty in the woodshed. Theo kept her eyes upward, always looking for a sign they’d changed the face of the heavens.

Or at the very least got their attention.  
_______

Will and Hannibal are lucky. It’s a new moon so there’s almost no light out when they steal into the cemetery. They’re flat shadows against the white mausoleums, the only moving thing in the city of the dead.

They stop before a worn and hulking crypt, old and ostentatious with scroll work and cherubs. The lock comes off easy. The letters above the door read FORREST.

“At least one good thing came out of this.” Hannibal said, stopping to lean against a stone urn filled with rotting flowers. "You know I didn’t kill those men.”

“I know you didn’t kill those men because I haven’t killed you yet.” Will said.

“Would you still use your hands? To kill me?” Hannibal was just visible in the crypt, far too comfortable there for Will’s liking. A large smug spider waiting by the web.

Will handed him a crowbar and pointed to an tomb.

“Open it.”

“Gladly.”

Will stepped back to let him work, wondering how many other couples tried exhuming corpses on date night.  
______

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" again.
> 
> Theo had a blank space ...and she'll write your name. 
> 
> What's the old saying about hoping the Gods never notice you?


	17. Never To The Heavens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A school gets a surprise, Hannibal gets the cold shoulder.

The Manderley Academy, a small preparatory school with ties to the antebellum area aristocracy, was not used to attention. The first time most people heard about them was a news item a few weeks back announcing the construction of an Olympic-sized swimming school on the grounds. 

On an unusually cold morning, Headmaster Wellington woke up to a call from a panicked groundskeeper asking him to come to the pool construction site immediately.

Wellington expected graffiti or theft or the remnants of a weekend party. What he saw in the half-finished pool brought his breakfast up.

Perched on the edge of the pool was a paper-mache chariot covered in silk carnations and yellow ribbons. Wellington remembered it from last year's big Bacchus krewe parade float. It was pulled by wire-mesh horses down into the pool, the horses rearing and bucking. Sitting in the chariot where two skeletons draped in red cloth. The bones where old, broken and blackened, fixed into positions with wire and struts. They were failing, skinless hands up in the air, lipless jaws open in mid-scream. They were about to crash, suspended just before impact.

If was the smell that turned Wellington’s stomach. The unmistakable coffin smell. This wasn’t a senior prank.

Classes were cancelled, the news suppressed and played down. But with Hannibal Fever catching and running riot in town, it didn’t stay buried for long. When it was revealed the corpses had been stolen from the Forrest family crypt, people went wild. The usual dreamlike air of New Orleans became full unreality. Hannibal masks appeared in store windows overnight. The NOPD was flooded with reports of people being stalked by or encountering Will and Hannibal. They were everywhere, hiding under people’s beds and climbing up their balconies. Every paisley tie and windowpane jacket flew off thrift store racks. Tattle Crime had to put all their Ripper articles on a separate website to handle the traffic. Think Pieces and opinion essays blasted “Cannibal Chic”, if for nothing else than being in bad taste. There were calls for curfews, but they evaporated. Halloween was around the corner and nothing was going stop New Orleans from celebrating.

Especially not when they’ve decided on a theme.

\---------------

Will and Hannibal ate in an former Jesuit building that Hannibal admired more for the atmosphere then the food. The dining room comfortably spartan, lots of old brick and low ceilings. The restaurant was relatively lively which helped hide that they weren't talking. They hadn’t talked much since setting up the ‘Phaethon’ tableaux. They were waiting for Theo and Bo to respond, or at least indicate they got the message and backed off. The city’s embrace of all things Hannibal drove a splinter into their relationship. There was unspoken agreement not to talk about it. 

Hannibal couldn’t figure it out. Will kept saying their old lives are dead. Why not let the public have fun their corpses? They’re not them anymore. But it clearly troubled Will deeply and he responded by drawing further into himself and for once Hannibal was afraid to pull him out. Afraid he might shatter.

It’s entirely possible, Hannibal thought, that Will sensed this hesitation and backed off in disgust. Will didn’t like being handled with kid gloves. Hannibal swallowed a bite of Crab Napoleon.

“I was looking at those face masks in the window of the costume shop today. Some very lovely work.”

Will put his drink down, a martini so dry it was nearly neat.

“Our masks?”

“The mouth guards, yes. I was tempted to buy one. A momento mori perhaps.”

“There’s a reason we burned everything.”

“A reminder to be ever vigilant then? Memory has a way of sifting the past’s dirt and leaving only gold.”

Will gave Hannibal a hard dark stare.

“I don’t need a reminder.” Will took a finishing gulp. “Do you?”

\-------------

Back at home, Will put his coat away and said he was ready for bed.

“I’ll get a nightcap.” Said Hannibal, walking toward the kitchen bar.

“No thank you.” Said Will, already at the top of the stairs. Hannibal walked over with the bourbon decanter in his hands just in time to watch Will walk past the door to Hannibal’s bedroom and open the door past it.

Will’s room. The room Hannibal has never been in. The only room he hasn’t put together and arranged.

The blow is forceful and Hannibal rolls with it, waiting for it to hurt later.

“What time should I wake you?” Hannibal asks.

“I’ll get myself up.” Said Will as he closed the door. Hannibal wasn’t close enough to hear if it locked, but the inside of his head heard a cell door slamming shut.

Hannibal put the decanter down on the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table. He walked over to the kitchen and got a teacup. He poured a shot of bourbon into the teacup and knocked it back. Then he did another. And another.

Theo and Bo weren’t the only ones being grounded.

\-----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Manderley" of course a reference to Bedelia's namesake Daphne Du Maurier's Gothic novel "Rebecca".
> 
> The chariot riders are a reference to Phaethon. When no one believed he was Apollo's son, he demands to ride the chariot of the sun to prove them wrong. Everyone is against this, he does it anyway, and crashes, nearly burning up the whole world.
> 
> Will Graham aint your teacup. At least not twice.


	18. Toss And Turn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Because he loves me.” Will whispered.

Will’s bedroom had unfinished white walls, a chair, a desk, a lamp, and a single bed. It was clean, tidy and monastic. Nothing extra or decorative or personal, the furnishings pleasantly anonymous. Everything smelled brand new.

Will sat in bed, wide-awake with sweaty palms. He was sobering up to the possible consequences, intended or otherwise, of the evening. He wasn’t scared, more like things had become unpredictable. Will worried about the unpredictable. Will was deeply uncomfortable with the unpredictable. His fear of unpredictability matched only by Hannibal’s capacity for boredom. It was a bad forecast, two strong systems colliding. Hurricane weather. 

Will wished he kept a bottle of bourbon in the room, or some wine. He couldn’t risk going downstairs. For all his cold iron that evening, he knew it wouldn’t take much to bend his resolve. A look maybe. A well-chosen word. He knew in his bones how easily he could be talked out of this. The door stays shut. 

Will lowered his eyes. The light from the street through the window and the shadows on the wall shifted and turned. They bent back and forth, forming almost but not quite the silhouette of a woman’s face on the wall.

The shadow on the wall opened its mouth. 

“Feeling unstable again Will?”

Will addressed the shadow. “I was never unstable. He helped me realize that. I didn’t fit into the suit people wanted me to wear.”

“By making your illness worse and putting you in jail? By killing people you cared about until you had no one left? By making you think you had no other choice?”

Will shook off the old crimes. He left them a long time ago. His colleagues never had his best interests at heart, only their own. They were so willing to be so blind. Why not return the favor? What mattered was today and tomorrow and the next day. What mattered was stopping it from happening to anyone else.

“By showing me I can stop him. That I can control him. I do stop him from killing. I can use him to stop others from killing.”

The Bedelia shadow chuckled. “ That’s an awful lot of power you’re giving yourself Mr. Graham. Are you sure you can pull it off? This thing you’re doing - indulging him just enough to stay interested but only if you don’t enjoy it? - it’s not sustainable. If I know that, you know that.”

“It’s what works. I won’t allow him to ...relish in it.”

“You think that hurts him? You think this hurts him? Taking your ball and going home? Who's being punished here? Who's in the doghouse? Who suffers more from being denied the other?”

There was a moment. The Bedelia shadow stood still. “You could walk right out this door and go back to him. He’d forgive you in a heartbeat.” 

Will clenched his teeth. “Hannibal is an infection. His existence expands what’s possible. Even dead he’s influencing people. I’ve got to be careful. I’ve got to have more control.”

“You don’t control. You feed. You feed off each other. A closed circle. I’d be careful about running hot and cold. It can backfire. You’re not worried he might stray? Develop a taste for something a little more ..blonde?”

“I’m not worried.” Will lied. “He’s always been loyal to me.”

“Loyal so far. He could find this routine tiresome. Are you sure it hurts him as much as it hurts you? You know what he’s capable of and you trust him because?”

“Because he loves me.” Will whispered.

“The Principle Of Least Interest Mr. Graham. The person with the least invested has the least risk.”

“And the least reward. Where you always this Machiavellian? Wasn’t that lonely?”

“Only if you find your own company loathsome. Hannibal was very lonely. It sounds more like you’re picking up his habits. Dealing out hurt and comfort.”

“Intermittent reward. It’s more effective at reinforcing behavior.”

“Now who’s Machiavellian? Trying to beat the Devil at his own tricks. There’s a lot of Dr. Lecter in you these days Will Graham.”

“It’s what our relationship is. It’s how it works.”

“Before, you pretended you were a shy academic so no one would look at you twice, never see the real you rattling around in there. Now you’ve borrowed Hannibal’s pride. As he borrowed mine. We both know this isn’t really you.”

“With Hannibal, I get to be the me I want to be more often. And he gets to be the man I think he could be. That’s enough. It has to be enough.” Will sighed. 

“How would you how a relationship works Will? You’re not exactly overburdened with experience. You couldn’t even keep your Mother home. Maybe she could smell the man you would become on you.”

Will surprised himself. He hadn't used that particular thorny lash since adolescence. He stares the shadow Bedelia down.

“You’re not an omen. You’re not a ghost. You’re something I invented to torment myself. You’re Jiminy Fucking Cricket and I'm getting a little tired of beating myself up.”

With that, the light changed and the silhouette on the wall was gone. Will turned over toward the door. Part of him was sure he’d see Hannibal’s feet behind the door, waiting. Will looked at the bottom of the door. Hannibal wasn’t there. He closed his eyes,

Drifting off to sleep, a wild part of Will’s mind imagined what it be like if Hannibal was waiting on the other side of the door. Sitting on the floor, face red and bloated from drink, eyes a bit glassy and mournful. Would he whine maybe? Like a kicked dog? Will fell further into sleep, imagining how grateful Hannibal would be when he opened the door, how magnanimous their reunion would be. They’d have another good week, Hannibal on his best behavior. Just like before. 

In his dream, Will and Hannibal enjoyed Sunday Brunch. It was midday and beautiful, bright and cloudless. Will laughed, but it sounded harsh and honking, a barnyard sound. A donkey’s dissonant braying. It jolted him out of sleep. He looked back to the bottom of the door, waiting.

\-------------------------------

Hannibal did not wait outside Will’s door that night. He did keep his door open and sat in the far chair, pretending to read while monitoring the light under Will’s door. Only after Will turned off his light did he get into bed. Hannibal thought about barging into Will’s room and sweeping him off his feet. He thought about nailing the window shut and locking him inside. He thought about leaving tonight and never looking back. He thought about a lot of things and dismissed them just as fast. None of that would do. 

Hannibal was patient. He knew Will requires a deft touch. He was happy to rise to the challenge. The rewards were too great. Will’s mind was a Labyrinth he loved to explore, one with shifting walls and unexpected traps. He knew the walls were weakening, and he'd seen the center once before and dropped a ball of twine there. It was just a matter of following the thread back to the heart.

But not tonight. 

\---------------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will is shadowboxing here. 
> 
> "Cold Iron" is usually used against faeries to keep them chained.
> 
> A Pinocchio reference, complete with Will imagining he's turning into a donkey. Too much time at Pleasure Island indeed. PLus, all that stuff about wishing on a star and anything your heart desires is pretty ...ominous 
> 
> Another Greek Myth! Theseus, the Minotaur and the Labyrinth with a ball of thread.


	19. Headspace Technology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We could be an official Moral Panic."

Bo Williams-Forrest paced around his room, dodging piles of dirty laundry and fuming. The maid only came in once a week when his parents were away, so he had a lot to dodge. Bo’s been shouting for the better part of an hour. Theodora, unmoved, leaned against the wall, arms folded.

“We gotta kill ‘em. Two bullets in the back of the head. Nothing fancy. Nothing artsy, just over and done with.” Bo said, talking more to himself than Theo.

“You’re afraid so you’re acting irrationally. Try to keep this in perspective.”

“Perspective?! They know where we live. They know where we go to school. They know it was us.”

“And we know where they live. And we know where they work. It’s a level playing field.”

Bo thrust his finger into Theo’s face. “It wasn’t your family dug up and put on parade. It’s not your name in the news. You didn't have to account for your every waking moment over the weekend to the police for four hours!”

“I have just as much to lose as you. They’re trying to scare us. Don’t let them.”

Bo stopped and started waving his arms as he spoke. Theo worried he was going to knock his football trophies off the shelf. Or worse.

“Just sit around waiting for them to kill us? You wanna eat cucumber sandwiches and gossip with someone who’d snap your neck as soon as look at you?”

Theo’s eyes narrowed. Bo didn’t understand. He was incapable of understanding. 

“Think for a second. How did Hannibal manipulate his way out of suspicion? He framed people. Think about how easy we’d be to frame, now, with the news the way it is. We could be an official Moral Panic. Our lives would be over before it went to trial.”

“All the better reason to get it over with now, before they see it coming."

"The corpses in the pool mean they see it coming. No. That's not the play."

"So what’s your big plan then? How are you gonna Batman villain your way out of this?”

Theo pulled her shoulders up, framing them. “It’s Mutually Assured Destruction. We wait. Then maybe open a dialogue.” 

“Dialogue." Bo said in sneering deadpan. "You can wait. If they come here, they’re getting got.” Bo kicked a slightly loose part of the floorboard. “I got weapons all over this house.”

Theo’s mouth dropped. “Are you literally insane? What if the maid finds them? Or your parents?”

“I’ll improvise.”

“Yeah I’ve seen you improvise. Great job with Connor Smythe, he really deserved to die cause you can’t count.”

The room got hot. A Rubicon had been crossed. The plan was to drug Connor into a near-dead stupor, wait for the Governor to come by for his typical 2 A.M assignation and find a “dead” Connor with a letter from some “Concerned Voters” about where he can drop off the money to keep this out of the papers. It was supposed to provide some untraceable Art Murder funds while also scaring straight the prodigal Governor. It was supposed to be simple. But Bo, good as he was at getting himself invited up to Connor’s place at midnight, neglected to track the number of drops he was slipping into Connor’s drink. Connor overdosed and they improvised, Bo scrawling WE KNOW on the wall in marker. Just enough they hoped to keep the Governor scared and the whole thing hushed up.

Bo’s voice went up again. “I dealt with the problem. You were the one who thought I couldn’t go through with it. You were the one who said I had too much “societal programming”. I proved what I’m capable of. “

“You sure proved something alright. Don’t think I forgot what you said. The last taboo? While he’s still warm.”

“It was a joke! I thought it'd flatter your sick fucking sense of humor. Where do you even get off judging me? I held the hammer, not you.” Bo, practically panting, tightened his posture. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”

Theodora stared at him, eyes flashing the color of gunmetal in moonlight. “I am the carpenter and you are my tool.”

Bo stepped back.

“Holy shit. Ho-leee shit you actually belief the crazy shit you read. Newsflash Theodora! Gods don’t have credit cards and home addresses.” Bo shouted himself hoarse. He sat down on the bed. “You’re gonna get us both killed.”

“I’d settle for one.” 

They stared at each other. Theodora backed out of the room, eyes locked on Bo. When she turned to enter the hallway, there was a thundering crash behind her. Theo, unblinking, looked down at Bo’s heavy bedside lamp bent on the floor. It left a dent in the wall an inch from her head. She turned and walked away.

Bo shouted at her to come back, but it was too late. She was already gone.

\----------------- 

Will awoke from a restless night of half-sleep to find he’d actually overslept. His northern facing bedroom window didn’t get enough daylight to wake him at his usual hour. The day was already off-schedule and he hadn’t even taken a piss yet. Will gets up and pauses before the door, wondering if Hannibal is on the other side. He stretches out the moment of unknown and possibility until he opens the door and it collapses. Hannibal’s not there. Hannibal is also not in his bedroom, in the kitchen, in his office, in the living room or bathroom or storeroom or downstairs half-bath. Hannibal is not at home.

Will has a sharp bright moment of panic before realizing it’s nearly noon and Hannibal is probably at work. He didn’t leave a note, which Will took as a passive-aggressive jab to keep Will in a state of mild panic all day. He thought about calling him but a swell of self-esteem stopped him. Don’t be the first to call. Don’t go in with your tail between your legs. You didn’t do anything wrong. Make him make it up to you. 

Will skipped breakfast, drinking only two cups of black coffee before heading to his workshop. If he was going to be in a sour mood all day, he wanted to savor it. 

\----------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headspace Technology - another perfume industry term, a technique developed in the 1980s to elucidate the odor compounds present in the air surrounding various objects. Usually the objects of interest are odoriferous objects such as plants, flowers and foods. Similar techniques are also used to analyze the interesting scents of locations and environments such as tea shops and saw mills. After the data is analyzed, the scents can then be recreated by a perfumer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headspace_technology
> 
> It's quite literally a device for testing the feeling in the air.
> 
> And we have a Jesus Complex for Theo. Thinking you're God is catching...
> 
> Will is a strong independent Empath who don't need no Cannibal (he says to himself) 
> 
> Side note: Murder Teens are very fun to write.


	20. The Stars Must Stick Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which dinner is served and robins are discussed.

Hannibal, dressed in a black turtleneck to deal with a sudden cold snap that had the entire city digging through drawers to find sweater vests and scarves, walked up to the Glasswerk Gallery & Foundry in the Central Business District.

When Hannibal Lecter arrived at his print shop that morning, a letter was waiting for him under his door. It invited him, as a member of New Orleans cultural community, to a lunchtime showing of new art by native son Hollis Des Chenes. The show was seasonally appropriate, full of glass skeletons with gleaming exposed circulatory systems. How could he refuse?

New Orleans’ Central Business District is one of those typically American urban concepts. An area of disused warehouse and shipping space re-named by a Public-Private partnership and molded into a pre-fab neighborhood of converted lofts, boutiques, and restaurants where the menus have to be explained. The natural result of putting a lot of new hotels smack dab in an abandoned industrial area. It had been going on long enough that residential speculation opened up. Just a few blocks from the Glasswerk, a trio of condo blocks anchored by a Whole Foods rose. 

Low-rise and mostly brick to appease the Preservation Board, but another corporate face of the newer, richer, whiter New Orleans. They made a big noise about “re-claiming” unused parking lots to create a “denser, more walkable urban environment” and said nothing about raising rents five times over the city’s median. Another part of the forces that rushed in Post-Katrina to buy quaint historical charm at bargain basement prices. The 09’ bedbug infestation of New York City was caused in no small part by antiques liberated from water-logged mansions showing up in tony east coast galleries and auction houses. Hannibal likes telling that story at dinner parties.

(His other favorite story involves a man who claimed to have bought a lampshade made of human flesh off someone’s porch immediately post-Hurricane. The seller was getting rid of everything in the house and said it had been in the family for “a very long time.”. Hannibal left out the part where analysis revealed it was animal hide. He sometimes wondered if Will might be into leatherworking.) 

Still, not all the new parts of town are a grim late-capitalist power grab. New Orleans is a massive convention and tourism town and not every visitor wants to get blackout drunk on Bourbon street, at least not every night. The torrential river of visitors pouring out of the hotels that ringed the CBD meant places like the Glasswerk or the Oyster Museum could stay afloat by capturing a bit of the run-off from the more traditional attractions. And unlike a Brooks Brothers outlet in an old canal control building, the Glasswerk could still claim to be a factory. 

The public face of the Glasswerk was a stark white gallery. Inside, Hannibal found life-sized glass skeletons arranged in poses taken from Gothic manuscripts. Strategically placed pin lights cast the clear bones into sharp, sparkling forms. The level of detail was extraordinary. Hannibal could tell the gender and relative age of each of the figures. Some skeletons dragged smoky glass chains or wore garlands of crystal flowers, the color threads twisting within and around each other like frozen nebulae. One skeleton, a young man, bowed his head and held out his blazing ruby-red heart upward in an open palm. The theme was repentance, standing naked and transparent, seen from every angle. The dead right before the moment of judgement, stuck in the unknowing. It reminded Hannibal not unpleasantly of his own broken heart installation, done for an audience of one, all those years ago. 

Then, near the back double doors, he saw Theodora. She stood out, a black dress with white piping more suited to cocktail hour with matching heels and chunky jewelry. Her hair was freed from a cheerleader ponytail only to be braided, twisted, and woven into a large golden bun. She looked like she was dressed as someone else, hiding in plain sight as an adult, or a rich teenager’s idea of an adult. 

She walked toward him. 

“Interesting meeting you here Mr. Caradoc.”

Hannibal smiled. The gall of this girl. “Likewise Ms. Chatelain. I’m surprised, don’t you have classes now?”

“I got a pass.”

“American schools give out passes for art openings?”

“They do at my school. This counts towards independent study.”

Theo looked toward a skeleton trying in vain to untangle his grey glass chains. “Mom and Dad taught me to appreciate craftsmanship at a young age. The glasswork is exquisite, one wrong move in blowing or shaping and the whole thing shatters.”

“The fact that the artist can evoke such pathos and life in hard glass speaks well to his ability and sensibility.”

“Maybe a reminder that sentiment and forgiveness can be found anywhere.”

“Or a warning against the human need to anthropomorphize. To see smiles in wall sockets and frowns on car grills.”

Theodora resisted the urge to step back, or frown, or react at all. Her prep school posture never broke.

“Would you like to see how it’s done?” Hannibal pointed to the double doors leading into the Foundry part of Glasswerk Gallery & Foundry. Theodora nodded and they went inside.

\----------

Past the double doors and down a dark hallway, the atmosphere in the Foundry was very different than the showroom. The reverent silence and white walls replaced with banging hammers and faint classic rock riffs from an ancient soot-covered boombox in the back. A chirpy tour guide twittered away brightly about the process of glassmaking to a group of seated grandmother types, all of whom seemed more interested in the sweat-drenched backs of the burly glassworkers than the history of metallic salts as a coloring agent.

Theo stood for a moment transfixed by the heat of the ovens. Even in the area marked SAFE DISTANCE by striped green paint on the concrete floor, you could feel the raw power of the ovens. The heat was a wall, a solid thing you could press against your head against.

Theo rested her cheek on the invisible wall, just for a second, and then turned toward Hannibal.

“I’ve been reading that book you gave me, It’s very interesting. There are so many coded or oblique references to the Terror, but phrased so they could be taken either way.”

“Public opinion about the Revolution had yet to congeal into correct sentiment. He didn’t want to back the wrong horse.”

Theodora turned the thought over, examining its facets.

“I loved the part on robins. How cruel it is.”

Hannibal raised his eyebrows. Theodora recited.

“..the Gourmand is in essence inhumane and cruel because he has not pity for this charming little bird of passage, whose gentleness and confidant familiarity should place it beyond the reach of our attacks. “

Hannibal smiled. It was small and personal, meant for himself.

“You forgot the rest. ‘But if it were necessary to have compassion for the whole world, one would eat no one; and, commiseration aside, one must admit that the robin, which holds a distinguished rank in the class of songbirds, is a very succulent roast. ‘“

Hannibal’s smile was bigger this time. Public, with a hint of teeth.

“It’s enough to make you wish for Lent.” Theodora, still at least outwardly calm, picked up a blue glass flower off a nearby shelf. They were made to demonstrate glass coloring techniques to tour groups. Inexpensive but eye-catching, no two alike. She held it out to Hannibal.

“From me to you, A thank you for the book.”

Hannibal was always gracious when accepting gifts, especially those that seem more like offerings. 

“Thank you. It’ll look beautiful in the shop. A paperweight maybe.”

Theodora let herself breathe. Let herself hope that was enough.

“Another thing about robins.” Said Hannibal, looking back to the glassworkers shaping and turning molten glass. “The males in spring get incredibly territorial and agitated. They’ve been known to attack their mates, their reflections, even red bits of cloth. So many die needlessly this way.”

“That’s tragic.”

Hannibal watched the glassworkers shove a glowing metal ball into a hot oven.

“Nature often compels us to tragedy.”

\------------------

Will Graham arrives home tired, hungry, and annoyed. He had some foot traffic at the workshop but all looks and no sales. They’d come to gawk at his organized array of gears and tools and half-finished antique machines. An unfortunate side effect of being written up in more places. The new commissions helped him deal with it, but only just. He thought about closing it to the public all together. Strictly invitation only.

For the second time in a day he stopped before a door. He could tell Hannibal was home. He could even tell he was cooking all the way from the porch. “Last chance.” He thought. “You have no idea what’s on the other side.” Thought a voice inside his head.

His stomach won the argument, rumbling and twisting toward the dense kitchen smells seeping out under the front door. 

Will opened the front door and the interior burst before him in a wave of light and warmth. Hannibal had put shades and bulbs in the Art Nouveau brass lamps they got a month ago. The fireplace burnt at a dull glow and every vase on every surface was filled with fragrant white day lilies. The light and perfume was overwhelming. Will’s eyes took a second to adjust.

Hannibal stood turning a steak, visible through the kitchen window and framed in bunches of flowers. A lively little waltz was playing from Hannibal’s iPad on the counter. “Chopin. Minute Waltz.” Will remembered from Hannibal’s late night music lessons back in the cross-country days.

“Welcome home Will.” Hannibal said, sipping a glass of wine in his other hand. “I’ve taken the liberty of preparing dinner. Why not put your bag away and freshen up. I’ve got everything under control here.”

Will walked toward the kitchen, the smell of cooking flesh mixing with the day lilies’ perfume into a heavy, lurid primary note. His entire body hurt to eat.

“What are you making?”

“Pork.”

Will glowered. He may have growled, he was feeling lightheaded after all.

“I have the receipt and butcher’s packaging on the table if you don’t believe me.”

Hannibal smiled. Will shouldn't have let him get away with that but the meal smelled so rich that a part of him didn’t care if he was lying.

Will slid his bag off and put his jacket away. He sat down at the dinner table and Hannibal brought over a bourbon and water.

“Just wine for tonight.” Will said. 

This was good thought Will. They’re being good with each other, having give and take. Compromise. That’s what healthy, stable couples do. This is normal. This is good. They have a nice life. Will gets to keep his nice life.

Will’s first bite was almost painful. It took measures of control not to devour the entire thing at once. Pork Normandy, a cold-weather French dish of cream and apples and cinnamon, was transformed by Hannibal into a melting soft merger of meat and fruit. It felt like sinking into an old upholstered chair.

As Will lifted another fork to his mouth, Hannibal said.

“I met Theodora today. I had a very interesting time.”

Will nearly dropped his fork. He was two seconds from running.

“She’s alive and well and intact. No, she came to see about the current situation.”

Will counted to ten and put his fork down. 

“And what did she have to say?”

“That some sort of agreement can be achieved. We’re all civilized. This doesn't have to continue. She gave me her word.”

Hannibal pointed with his knife to the fireplace, inside which the fire burned steadily. Will noticed the shining blue flower on the mantelpiece. A hard and cold object in their house of rough linen and warm old wood. Will hated it immediately, a reminder of someone else in Hannibal’s life. How did the old song go? “Beware of young girls who come to the door...”

“A peace offering.” Will finally said, eating his forkfull.

“More like a promise.”

Hannibal swirled his wine around and took a gulp.

“But I have to know,” He looked at Will across the table. Hannibal looked so cozy, so domestic with his hair disheveled and cooking stained t-shirt and bright eyes. “If it did come to that and the rock met the hard place- Which one of them would you kill?” 

Will sliced off another hunk of pork and massed it onto his fork.

“I think you mean, which one of them would I kill first?”

\-----------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Glasswerk is based on a real place and the show is based on a real show I saw there! - http://neworleansglassworks.com/
> 
> Shades of Hades and Persephone here, if you have Greek Myth glasses on. 
> 
> On The Robin http://www.almanachdesgourmands.com/?page_id=558
> 
> If anthropomorphize is to give human qualities to nonhuman things, what would Hannibal from his POV due to some select people? Cannimorphize them? Deusorphize? 
> 
> Lent, of course being the period of fasting and abstinence in the Catholic tradition. New Orleans restaurants often feature special meatless Lenten menus. 
> 
> Chopin's Minute Waltz, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minute_Waltz Chopin shows up on the show a lot, I think cause he's was noted at the time for for his improvisation skills. Also Chopin called this "The Little Dog Waltz" 
> 
> Didn't I mention cinnamon before? What men will do for spices. Or a spice lacking in life.
> 
> "Beware of Young Girls" is from cult singer-songwriter Dory Previn who wrote the song after her husband ran off with their young friend ...Mia Farrow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmi7eeCNVvo
> 
> Will is murderously jealous and Hannibal is warmly domestic? You know how some couples eventually start to look alike?


	21. Skeleton Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things get meta and mystical.

Will and Hannibal, post-dinner, sit in bed reading. Hannibal’s doesn't approve of Will reading the iPad in bed. He’s sure the blue light aggravates Will’s insomnia, but after the success of dinner he’s feeling even more indulgent than usual.

“Huh.” Will looks up from his inbox. “Le Deluge wants to shoot me.” 

Le Deluge was the local art/scene/lifestyle website for terribly trendy young New Orleanians, the kind of people who enjoy interactive theater and driftwood-as-wall-art. They said they had a last minute cancellation and would love to shoot some models (and Will) at his machine shop tomorrow. Token pay but great exposure. Will wasn’t sure he needed more. You can die of exposure.

“That’s good news yes?” Hannibal looked over, his face painted with concern.

“It’s last minute. I don't know what I’d wear.”

“I’ll dress you.” 

“No paisley please.” Will nudged closer to Hannibal. The chill in the air remained. They had to take some of the more sensitive plants off the patio and into the house to avoid frost. It did nothing to stop the revving up of revelers, already primed for tomorrow’s Halloween celebrations. Even their sleepy residential pocket had a few premature firecrackers and masked couples carrying bottles of wine to pre-Saturday parties. 

Will tabbed over to the Twitter account he kept for the machine shop. Local users buzzed about a foiled CVS robbery in Mid-City. The attempted robber, a good ol’ boy type the shape and texture of beef jerky, brandished a large machete and demanded everything in the till. He was immediately checked to the ground and knocked out by two unknown customers. Unknown because they were wearing the now ubiquitous Hannibal Lecter masks. They wore them into the store before grabbing a few bags of candy, obviously on their way to a party and out for last minute supplies. They didn’t wait for the cops to arrive. The machete turned out to be a well-polished prop.

Will showed Hannibal the news story. Hannibal smiled.

“Of all the things I thought I’d be, a masked vigilante never crossed my mind.”

“Superheroes are big right now. You got to appeal to the younger demographic.”

“Maybe we’ll get a TV show. Something cheap and gory no doubt.” 

“With executive producer Freddie Lounds. She’d be happier than a pig in shit.” Will’s eyes lowered. “You don’t think-”

“No. Build and height are wrong. But we should keep an eye on them.”

Hannibal closed his book and sank into bed. 

“Wouldn’t want to leave mad dogs running about.”

He turned off the light.

\---------------------------------

Will usually spent Saturday morning pottering around the house or bookkeeping, his machine shop sensibly closed on weekends. This morning however, he was suited up in tweed and brown twill (No tie, sensible flannel shirt, work shoes) and out the door by 8. Le Deluge wanted a noontime shoot to best capture the light glinting off Will’s polished parts.

Hannibal opened his store as usual, dusting the old pharmacy counter and putting out the rack of 1$ paperbacks offered on the honor system via a well-drawn sign and attached tin piggy bank. He unrolled a large poster, a special order from Chile. The poster showed St. Expeditus in his canonical attributes. A Roman soldier with a palm leaf in one hand, raised cross in the other, and crushing a crow beneath his feet. Before he was a saint, Expeditus delayed his conversion to Christianity, listening to the Devil in the form of a crow cry “Cras”, Latin for “tomorrow.” He made his decision by killing the crow, which is why his raised cross reads HODIE in blazing gold, Latin for “today.”

There’s a New Orleans connection. Folklore says the nuns at Our Lady Of Guadalupe Chapel received a shipment of the saint’s statues from France and mistook the mailing order “Expédit “ for the Saint’s name. A similar story is told on Reunion Island off the coast of east Africa where veneration and invocation of St. Expeditus is popular, if a bit taboo. 

The cult-ish creole nature of the saint and his embodiment of new beginnings felt like the ideal image to base his window display around. Expeditus is the patron of emergency, solutions, and merchants. It couldn’t hurt to curry his favor. 

While putting the poster up, Hannibal became aware of a slow rising din down the street. It only got louder, revealing itself as a mass of drums and horns and singing by groups of people in skeleton body stockings and rubber bone masks. There was a tradition in poor black neighborhoods of skeleton dancers on feast days to remind children to stay on the true and narrow path, but based on the beer cans and hooping, this wasn’t them. 

People stopped on the street to dance with them. Merchants left shops and hung out windows, throwing hard candy and pennies to the party below. The leader, lifting a black umbrella decked with skulls and wearing a velvet top hat, shouted to the growing crowd.

“Dance and dance for tomorrow we die!”

“Mortals all, remember why!” responded the skeleton dancers.

Hannibal found himself on the street before he registered what he was doing. The pull of a crypto-pagan dance of death erupting before his store too powerful to resist. He danced with shop girls and small children, he danced with old drunks spilling out of the corner bar and tattooed musicians who abandoned their busking. One tall skeleton dancer in a full-face skull mask removed his gloves to swing Hannibal around the street like a rag doll. 

The dancers passed through, steadily as they arrived. Hannibal returned to his store giddy and breathing heavily. He was dizzy and delighted, the whole world at once brighter and blurrier. It was a good omen, a sign of favor. He didn’t think anything was wrong when his heart raced or when it took him a second more to catch his breath. He assumed the numbness in his hands was from the cold. He didn’t think anything was wrong until he collapsed reaching for his phone, face down and drooling onto a priceless copy of Paradise Lost. 

\-----------------

Noon came and went. Le Deluge was a no-show. Calls to the phone number provided in the email went unanswered so when the machine shop phone did ring, Will answered it curtly and quickly

“Yes?!” 

“Is Mr. Caradoc with you?” The voice on the other end was clear but wavering, a ripple of fear in a still pond.

“No he’s- Theodora?”

“Yes. I called the shop and his home, he’s not picking up. He’s not with you?”

“No I had a photo shoot today so I had to open the shop.” Will felt Theodora’s panic. It was all he needed to put the pieces together. 

“He’s taken him. He's taken him and I know where. “ Theodora gave Will the address and told him to hurry.

Will didn’t need to be told. Will put the phone down. 

Behind Will’s eyes was a single hot blister of action ready to burst. No time to think, just move.

Will was seeing red. 

\------------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Le Deluge is of course a reference to the Sun King's final words "After me, the deluge" meaning after his reign France would fall apart. 
> 
> St. Expeditus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditus
> 
> I like the double meaning of "curry" here.
> 
> Danse Macabre and a little Papa Legba anyone?


	22. All Hallows Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal needs saving. Will makes a decision.

Getting there is a blur. Will called a taxi before he got his coat on, the sun is setting and the parade crowds rarely reached this far west of Canal. He knew a car would be quickest, but he paced every second waiting for it, stopping himself from breaking into a run and leaping over rooftops to the address Theo gave.

It was a familiar street, just down the road from the Chatelains. Will told the cab to stop a block before so he could case it out on foot. Theo’s car was already there, a red 66 Chevy Impala. Birthday gift from one of mom’s gearhead buddies, a strangely James Dean choice for a blonde cheerleader. Will stood at the house's iron gates.

The home of Caroline and Clayton Williams-Forrest and their handsome son Bo. Will clenched his fists. He was in there. He was in there with Hannibal. He knew it. He could smell it. Will opened the iron gates that enclosed the townhouse. He felt like he was passing through prison bars again, not knowing if he was going out or in. He decided it didn’t matter.

“Psst!” Theodora waved him over from the shadow of the large weeping willow near the front porch. She pointed up to the only lit window in the house on the upper side.

“Bedroom” she whispered. She pointed again to the fence and tree branches leading up and around to the open window. Easy work for for the agile. Will moved his head to the front door.

“I’ll go first, get him into position by the window.”

“Be careful, Bo said he hid weapons all over the house. Maybe find one.”

Will squinted at the idea he’d need a weapon. He lowered into a crouch and crept toward the front door as Theodora pulled herself up the fence and to the top porch.

The front door was unlocked. 

Will didn’t have to look for Bo’s hiding places, the kitchen provides. He walked with a large chef’s knife in his grip to the bottom of the stars. The sun had set, and the falling darkness at the windows made the thin outline of light around Bo’s closed door bright as neon. Will, knife ready and longing, walked toward it.

\--------- 

“Hey! Hey!” There was a loud snapping noise echoing in Hannibal’s head. He fought to open his eyes, every limb weighing a thousand pounds. It felt like parts of his brain had gone to sleep, like he was lost halfway inside a dream. If this was a dream, it wasn’t going very well.

“Wakey wakey eggs and bac-y!” There was a slap across Hannibal’s face. It felt numb, like he’d been coated in Novocaine. He could tell he was sitting up and he could tell he was tied up in some easily escapable knots. But he couldn’t loosen them, or even hold his head upright. That’s when he realized he should be on guard. Will’s knots would’ve been perfect.

A finger pulls open Hannibal’s eyelid. 

“Not another fucking overdose.” Hannibal could make out the blurred form of Bo standing over the bed, opening his dresser to take out a First Aid kit.

“Can’t kill you if you’re already dead.”

Hannibal mustered all his focus for a slurring moan in Bo’s direction.

“Oh good.” Bo put the kit down and shined a flashlight in Hannibal’s eyes. “It’s alive.” 

Hannibal sucked his lips in, trying to get some liquid into his mouth.

“What-doo you think -- you’re doing?”

Bo put his hands on his thighs like an angry camp counselor. “I’m working on my relationship, okay? A relationship you ruined, thank you very much.”

Bo folded his arms. He was gloating. Was I ever this tacky? Thought Hannibal. 

“We kill you, Theo gets to be top dog and everything goes back to normal and stays awesome. I was even thinking we pin the whole thing on you. Say you attacked us. Come out of this heroes.”

Bo’s bedroom door flew open. Will blocked the doorway, chef’s knife gleaming. 

“And we would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.”

Bo jumped back a bit, palming something out of his pocket and concealed in his right hand. Hannibal tried to move his head to warn Will.

“This is how it’s going to go.” Will circled toward Bo, keeping the door to his back, arm out and ready to strike. “You’re going to tell me what you dosed him with.”

“And then what?” Bo moved out of Will’s slashing range, closer to the open window..

“Maybe we let you live.” Will lied. He had no intention of letting Bo leave the room.

“Doubt it. How about you come any closer and I stick another patch on hubby over here and he OD’s?”

Bo held out the patch in his palm, already slightly open. Will looked past him, to the almost indistinct shape in the tree outside. He blinked twice.

Theodora swung into the room, landing feet first onto Bo’s back. Bo tumbled forward and Will stepped back. The opioid patch flung across the room and landed under the dresser. Theo kicked loose the floorboard by the bed and pulled out a revolver. She pointed it at Bo with Will behind him, right in gutting distance. 

“C’mon babe, shoot him. Murder-suicide, think about it. We could be the ones who find the Murder Husband’s attic of horrors or whatever.”

“Sorry Bo this isn’t really working out for me.” She switched the safety off. “I think it boils down to artistic differences.”

She pulled the trigger.

Click.

She pulled it again.

Click.

They’d read all the same stories about Hannibal Lecter's big night. Bo wasn’t a complete idiot.

Will jabbed at Bo but barely made a slash as Bo lunged forward with all his star quarterback strength and speed. He lept out the window and down the tree branch like a cat, quick and reckless.

Will dropped the knife and ran to Hannibal, trying to remember his rudimentary police training on overdose victims. 

“Kiiiiit. Drawer-” Hannibal moaned, shrugging his head toward the dresser.

Will opened the kit. Inside was an unopened drug spray pack.

“Narcon?” He said, opening the pack and assembling the needleless syringe.

“We didn't want another Connor.” she said. “He was an accident.”

Will tilted Hannibal head to inject the spray, his breathing shallow and interrupted.

“I believe you.” Will said, spraying Hannibal’s left nostril, then the right.

There was a moment.

And then another.

And another.

And then Hannibal awoke, eyes wide, gasping for air.

Will held back, waiting for it to be real. Hannibal slipped out of Bo’s shoddy knots and put his hand on Will’s shoulder.

“You let him live.” Hannibal almost smiled as he said it.

Will turned to Theo.

“Not for long.” Will said.

Theo nodded and slid out the window. Will slung Hannibal around his shoulders, feeling his pulse come back to life and the color return to his face. Hannibal looked over at Will, his body vibrating with righteous fury, his face set like the judge of all mankind. It was a face he could look at forever. 

If this was a dream, he never wanted to wake up.

\--------------

Theodora’s car was gone. She left her keys in thinking she might need a quick escape. Between that, Hannibal’s physical state, and the fact that the city-wide party was in full swing, they decided to hole up at Will’s house for the night. Easier to defend. To recover and plan.

The house on Constance street was dark. No parties in the yard or baskets of candy on the porch. They came in through the backdoor, careful to see if anyone was inside. The house seemed secure, all windows shut and doors locked. 

They walked through, Hannibal losing steam as they got into the house.

“Just give me a moment” He said, back against the wall. Will let him go and walked down the hall to get a bourbon from the kitchen. Theo was already ahead, marveling at being inside Hannibal Lecter’s house. It wasn’t what she was expecting. She was expecting more skulls. Something glimmered on the mantelpiece in the pale moonlight. Theo picked it up. It was the blue glass flower she gave Hannibal. 

“I never saw him as the sentimental type.” She said.

“That’s his problem. What he gets sentimental about.” Will reached for a glass in the overhead rack.

Will thought he heard a twig snap. He turned around and met a terrible crashing noise as Bo smashed through their flimsy screen backdoor and pinned Hannibal to the wall. He growled and foamed, his big hands on Hannibal’s neck, choking him. Hannibal too shocked and weakened to fight back.

It was a flash of instinct, too fast for thought, too quick for grace or balletic airs. Theo threw the glass flower to Will and Will planted it dead into the back of Bo’s head. Bo staggered, went limp, and Will hit him again and again. Hit him until his skull was broken and the glass flower was covered in gore. He hit him again and again, blood pooling out the hallway and into the kitchen and onto their brand new rug. Will hit him until he noticed Theo was beside him and Hannibal was alive, just, leaning against the wall.

Will looked at Theo. Her red lipstick appeared quite black in the moonlight. He kissed her, long and deep, smearing her lipstick onto his face, mixing it with Bo’s splattered blood. 

Then he hit her over the head with the glass flower. She dropped like a stone onto Bo’s body. 

Will leaned in to see if Hannibal was still breathing. He touched Hannibal’s neck to check his pulse. He was breathing, just. Alive, just.

The voice inside his head, soft as falling snow, said. 

“Save yourself. Kill them all.”

Will remembered Dr. Factice’s advice.

“Love is an act of bravery.” he said.

Will leaned in and kissed Hannibal, painting his face with Bo’s blood and Theo’s lipstick. Hannibal coughed. His eyes opened and he slumped into Will’s arms.

Will patted his head and guided him, half-carrying, into the bathroom. 

\--------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It's Alive" and  
> “And we would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.” feel like self-explanatory references but I have no idea how old any of you people are sooo.....
> 
> Theo quoting Chicago here - "I guess you could say we broke up over artistic differences. he saw himself as alive. I saw him dead."
> 
> Bo's motive isn't that different from Will's. They're a lot closer to the Murder Muppet Babies then they'd like to admit. 
> 
> Narcon training for NOPD is super recent but whatever.
> 
> I don't have to point out quoting the actual show/novels here do I? 
> 
> Will and Hannibal sittin' in a tree, blurring their identities. 
> 
> the Kiss comes from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH7dMBcg-gE which i also the inspiration for the whole deal. 
> 
> Epilogue to come.


	23. A Nice Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Hannibal talk about the future, and what that means.

Mr. Chatelain sat on the overstuffed purple settee in the hall atop the stairs drying his forehead with a handkerchief. It was so damned hot in there he thought, the downstairs fire blazing despite the heat wave and throngs of people in the house. A roaring fire was traditional, after all, regardless of ongoing warming trends.

Mr. Chatelain tugged at his collar to let some steam out. He was in a full white tie affair he had taken out of storage and let out. His wife sat next to him, pretending to look bored and unconcerned while tapping her fingers on the leather clutch in her lap and tunelessly humming every few minutes or so. Mr. Chatelain wished he he had his flask, but it was confiscated during the ride over. 

“Do you think I should check on things?” He said.

“I’m sure everything is fine. Otherwise-” The hall door opened. An older woman wearing far too much pink walked out, smiling.

“She’s ready.”

The Chatelains stood up. The woman in too much pink opened the door behind her and out walked Theodora Marie Chatelain.

She was in white, another tradition, a small corsage of pale yellow roses on her wrist. Her hair had been dramatically bobbed and curled into something platinum and old-fashioned. Her father cooed over her, saying she looked like Carole Lombard. Her mother just smiled, looking at her with a mix of affection and pity. Theodora was used to that look. Lots of people looked at her like that after the accident. 

The woman in too much pink got father and daughter to link arms and start walking down the stairs at the cue from the band below. A man in a booming voice at the base of the stairs announced them as they descended.

“Miss Theodora Marie Chatelain and escort, Mr. George Jeremiah Chatelain.” 

There was some polite applause in the crowd below, practically a standing ovation by Hunting Club Standards. The Hunting Club’s debutante ball was a small affair, even by insular decaying institution standards. Just a few girls a year, mostly the same four families. It was tradition, just like the blazing fire and Ohio Hunting Lodge party. Unlike other balls, young ladies were traditionally not escorted by their fathers, but everyone there knew why Theo was.

“So brave.” They whispered among themselves, “To suffer all that at such a young age.” A man walking home from work reported the crashed red Chevy Impala on All Saints Day. It was wrapped around a tree, half-hanging into the open water. It was a miracle it didn’t fall in. Theodora was alive but unconscious when they found her. Bo was never found, his body most likely fallen into the bayou, food for scavengers and swamp things. Unlike Theodora, he wasn’t wearing his seat-belt.

The car crash was covered up of course, too personal a matter to get into the press. So too Theodora’s testimony to the police that the crypt robbery and investigation drove Bo mad. He got violent, irrational, started drinking a lot. Taking drugs to cope. They found narcotic patches and whiskey bottles in his bedroom. She said he forced her into the car, said he wanted to get away from everything and he wasn’t leaving without her. I thought he was going to kill me if I said no, she said.

And so Theodora came out with only physical scars. “But those doctors are miracle workers!” people said. “You’d never know. Except-” Except for the thing everyone was trying not to notice.

Theodora survived the crash intact except for her left ring finger which investigators figured got jammed or crushed in impact. Totally inoperable. It was removed at the knuckle. 

In its place, she had a slender silver finger. Custom made. Spared no expense.

Theo and father reached the bottom of the stairs and bowed slightly. The small band in the back of the ballroom began up again, a simple waltz. Theodora turned toward the fireplace and greeted the two men standing beside it.

“It’s traditional that the debutante chooses her first dance with someone other than her escort.”

She held out her left hand, the fire reflected in her silver finger.

“Would you do me the honor Mr. Van Meegeren?” 

Hannibal looked at Will looking at Theo’s invitation.

“It would be my pleasure.” said Will. Hannibal sipped his champagne.

“Be careful with him. He’s got two left feet.”

Will and Theodora took to the floor with the other couples, turning and swaying in the stuffy ballroom. The Hunters Club was over-embroidered and over patterned and over-full. It reminded Will of a hot house or natural museum exhibit, something to cultivate a rare and delicate plant. 

They danced for a while. Will looked at her silver finger as they turned.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore. Mother wants me to get one of those new things. Won’t shut up about servos and nerve interfaces and nanoparticles. I think it’s how she deals with it.”

“And how do you deal with it?”

“I like it. It’s a good reminder.”

“You’re not angry about losing it?”

“I gave up a finger. I lost a classic car. Mr. Tessdale is going to be so upset.”

Her glibness angered Will but it was also comforting. There was nothing they could do to her. She arrived fully-formed and unmovable. She wasn’t his fault. They didn’t create her. She just happened. Still, he was pretty aggressive with the dip and spin.

“Where did you learn to waltz like that Mr. Van Meegeren?”

“Miami. We tracked down an arms dealer. I left a Krugerrand where his heart should be.” 

Theo smiled, leaning in a bit closer. 

“I was thinking of applying to Georgetown. Figure I could get a better start on the inside there. A letter of recommendation from local celebrities might help that.”

Will blinked. They had become local celebrities. The real Le Deluge contacted him for a photo-shoot and Hannibal’s print shop became a legitimate tourist attraction. Will and Mrs. Chatelain even got the go-ahead to make the model streetcar exhibit at the museum. They had been profiled, photographed, interviewed, listed in bold letters in society columns and not a single person noticed they bore a resemblance to the most famous couple in America. 

It was impossible, The Murder Husbands were beyond true crime, beyond sordid cable TV melodrama and airport novels. They were myth, folklore, the murder tableaux sign of a decadent society taking justice into their own hands. The editorial pages raged. But lost was the idea that they were actual people, with actual skin and actual faces. It was impossible they were at the party. It was impossible they were anyone but James Caradoc and Nathan Van Meegeren. Everyone knew them. They were in the papers. Of course they’re who they say they are. 

Will knew this was all from their connection to Chatelains. All their doing. Their endorsement made them real. Putting the spotlight on the paper moon outshone the real one. The audience was dazzled, like a magician's misdirection. They only saw what they wanted to see. 

“I thought we agreed. You go to Tulane.” Will wanted her close, keep an eye on her.

“I can find out more in D.C Not waste time with Blind Item bullshit.”

“And how can we be sure you won’t turn us in the instant you’re over state lines?” Or worse, thought Will.

The waltz ended and Will leaned in for the final dip. Theodora extended her neck outward and brought her head up.

“What kind of girl do you take me for?”

The dance over, Theodora bowed and moved on to another partner. Will returned to Hannibal’s side by the fire. Hannibal had a drink waiting, the ice in the bourbon and water already melted. Will drank it eagerly.

“I should’ve killed her.” Will said.

“And miss the party? She’s far more interesting alive I think.”

Will grumbled into his drink. “She’s a complication.”

Hannibal stared at Will with an appreciative eye. Will had changed so much, yet still remained Will, no matter how many new growths and strange tendrils he put forth. He was blooming, even now with his worried brow and half-empty drink. He couldn’t have imagined this Will Graham. He couldn’t have planned it out and set it in motion, but here he was. By his side. Where he’d always be. As long as they both shall live.

“Tell me Will, what will you do when I die?”

“Don’t be morbid. It’s a party.” Will finished his drink.

“I’m older than you. It’s only natural you’d think about life without me.”

“I don’t. And I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.”

“Now who's morbid? Will you take another? Teach them what I taught you?”

Will passed his empty glass to a waiter. “You didn’t teach me anything. You just showed me what to look at. You expanded what was possible.”

Will pointed to Theodora, dancing with the heir to a beer fortune who could barely be counted to wear pants most nights. “She’s got a father. She’s got a life. She’s not like us. I’m not taking in strays. This stops here. When we die. This is over.”

Hannibal’s eyes drop. “No care to the future?”

“None whatsoever.”

Hannibal pursed lips and raised his head. “I like that. It’s very freeing.”

“We get to chose our fortunes. I chose this one. I like it.” Will put his hands in his pockets. “Except for one thing. I want one thing in the future. The near future.”

Hannibal’s eyes went up.

Will leaned in.

"It doesn't feel like a house without a dog. “

Hannibal smiled. “As many as you want.”

The band started up another song. An old fashioned song about midnight, the stars, and you. Will held out his arm to Hannibal and they danced on the humid ballroom floor with all the other endangered species. Soon there would be dinner, catered by Mr. Caradoc, with nods toward the season with smoked meat atop chestnut and sage stuffing. Will wondered if the guests would comment on the gaminess and unusually strong flavor. 

After all, it would’ve been a shame to waste him.

\------------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO, Carole Lombard http://theredlist.com/media/database/muses/icon/cinematic_women/1930/carole-lombard/052-carole-lombard-theredlist.jpg not onlt did she look like that and was a leading star of the 30s but she also famously had a horrible car crash where she had to have facial reconstruction surgery WITHOUT ANESTHETIC as to preserve her looks. It worked, and she was left with minimal scars. 
> 
> In Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell Lady Poole is brought back from the dead by a faerie who takes her ring finger as payment.
> 
> Another musical reference to Midnight, The Stars and You, the last song played in The Shining http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fN-Xjpd-qE thus implying Jack has become absorbed b the murderous hotel's history. 
> 
> So that's it, wow this was WAY LONGER then I was expecting. What did you guys think of the OCs? Cause I always think those are hard to write well. Thanks for reading and commenting! This was really fun to write I got to research things and describe fancy dinners and interior decors and go all in on myth references. In other fics that would be pretentious but here's it's lovingly on brand.

**Author's Note:**

> I accidentally deleted this fic during the server hiccup so here it is as one big thing!
> 
> Factice is a perfume term for a bottle used for display only, no real perfume inside.
> 
> van Meegeren is the name of the most accomplished Vermeer forger, he would "find" lost Vermeers to sell to the occupying Nazis.


End file.
